The Monster of the Sands
by Adicea
Summary: Michiru dreams of the Silence.
1. Chapter 1

I'm baaaaaack! Not like I was gone long.

No, Sailor Moon doesn't belong to me.

* * *

><p><em>A monster, <em>Michiru thinks. The dust storm roars over her thoughts, creeps forward, and the wind howls. _A monster, _she thinks again as she staggers back, an arm shielding her eyes from the grit that will inevitably fill her throat, the grit that will eventually consume her whole, will suffocate her and leave her, perhaps, a calcified body, one of many. _That's all it could be. A monster, _she tells herself.

She opens her mouth to scream as motes of glass hurtle into her arm—she opens her mouth and choking dust invites itself in. She doesn't scream; she screeches as the dust thickly coats the inside of her throat, both esophagus and windpipe, and the noise itself is enough to rip her larynx to shreds. One hand clutches at her throat; the other shields her eyes. She snaps her mouth shut and, visibly heaving, she continues on.

She continues on past the ruins of Tokyo, past the building where her father had opened his first business, past the restaurant she had loved as a child, past the house she had grown up in. She continues for what seems like miles and finally stops in front of a large house—no, it isn't a house. It's a mansion, she supposes. The door opens for her. She stumbles inside and collapses on the floor.

When she comes to, there is a garnet-eyed woman staring down at her. The silent woman offers a hand to her, which she takes hesitantly; the woman pulls her up and off of the floor.

"Water?" the garnet-eyed woman says softly.

Michiru clutches at her throat. She winces with the pain every breath brings. She nods.

The woman produces a full glass of water from thin air, and somehow Michiru is not surprised. She hands it to Michiru silently and sits down on a nearby couch; she pats the seat cushion as she does so, beckoning the violinist to take a seat as well.

"It's not just you," she says as Michiru sits down, taking great big gulps of water, "it's everyone."

Michiru looks at her as if to ask what she is talking about. The woman seems to understand, and says quietly, "Silence."

Michiru takes another gulp of water.

"The Silence. It's coming, Neptune."

Michiru opens her voice to speak, and somehow she finds that the water has healed her throat. "Neptune?" she queries.

"I'm not the one. Find her," the garnet-eyed woman says. She leans forward and kisses Michiru on the lips.

Michiru awakes to find that she is in bed. Her eyes are fearful and red as she clutches at her throat with a hand, breathing erratically to make sure her windpipe is clear. She looks around, finally, and sees the familiar sights of her apartment.

She gets out of bed and staggers to her violin case. Gingerly, she takes the precious instrument out and opens the door to the balcony. She steps into the cold night wind and breathes in. Finding it to be satisfyingly dust-free, she closes her eyes and raises the instrument to her chin. She runs the bow across the strings.

She doesn't stop playing until sunrise.

* * *

><p>A black-haired girl grins at her the next day, elbowing her and asking, "Did you stay up late playing Super Famicom or something? I've never seen you look this tired, Michiru-san."<p>

"You know I don't play video games," Michiru says weakly, resisting the urge to fall asleep at her desk right now. She doesn't care that the wood is hard and cold, or that the girl is rather irritatingly chattering into her ear. "I just had some trouble falling asleep last night, Asuka-san."

"Ah," Asuka says wisely. "Dreaming of a boy? Maybe Shinji-san?" She grins, looking not unlike a ravenous coyote. She looks over to the redhead boy and back at Michiru. "Maybe your kids will have purple hair," she supposes.

"You know I don't have a crush on Shinji-san," Michiru says. She glances at the swirls and knots of wood that form her desk and shakes her head, still trying not to fall asleep.

"But the purple hair—!"

"No," the violinist says, and for the first time she looks at Asuka, giving the black-haired girl a good look at what a wreck she is. "No," she repeats.

Asuka takes a good look at her eyes and finally seems to understand. Michiru's eyes are empty, haunted, and Asuka sees nothing in them, not even her reflection or the reflection of the light. Michiru's eyes are dead. "Okay," she says in a high-pitched tone, visibly frightened, and Michiru turns back to face the teacher. She says nothing for the rest of the day.

Michiru tries, to her credit, to pay attention to her teachers while she waits for the bell to ring so she can go home and fall in her bed and slip into blessedly dreamless sleep. She struggles to keep her eyes open, and part of her feels as though the dust has wormed its way into her mind—her thoughts are sluggish and dull and the world itself seems as though a veil has fallen over it. _This is the real world, _she tells herself as the school day progresses, as she barely makes it through Trigonometry and World History. _This is not the dream... the ruins were..._

But though she repeats the words to herself, she still feels as though the real world itself has become the dream—and that the dream she had last night has become her reality.

She is painfully right.

The bell rings, and somehow she finds the strength to stagger back to her apartment, which is in walking distance. She almost hits her head on the wall as she walks into the elevator and pushes the button for her floor. She slumps against the sides of the metal box as it rises, vision flickering as she tries not to pass out.

The elevator softly dings as the doors open. Squeezing her eyes shut in an attempt to stay conscious, she weaves down the hall and to her door. Fumbling around in her purse, she somehow manages to find the key in record time and unlocks the door, barely bothering to close it shut and relock it behind her before she runs in a last burst of energy to her bed. The world frays at the edges as she collapses onto her bed, spent, and finally disappears as she loses consciousness.

* * *

><p>She awakes buried beneath the sand. It is everywhere around her, consuming her, swallowing her, and as she opens her eyes and awakes sand pours into them. They begin to burn not even a second later and she closes them tightly, but that doesn't help, not with the sand that builds in her lungs with every breath she takes and the increasing pressure in her entire body that tells her she is suffocating. She reaches out with her hands to try and push some sand away to form a small air pocket. The sand only falls back into place neatly through her fingers.<p>

But it tells her which way is up.

She stops breathing to try and conserve oxygen and starts kicking her feet and pushing her hands up. She feels sand slide past her, but she isn't sure that she is moving at all—perhaps it's the movements of her hand that makes the sand move as such. Still, she continues.

She eventually breaks through to the surface only to be greeted by a blood-red sky and a small girl, shrouded in darkness. Michiru ignores her, takes gasping, shuddering breaths, grateful to be alive, and weakly stands up. The girl is perhaps a head or two shorter than her and has chilling purple eyes. She stares at Michiru.

"You survived," she says, obviously surprised. "Not many do." She gestures to the surrounding area, and Michiru's eyes follow her hand. "Do you see them?" she asks. "Those were the unlucky ones."

There are thousands, perhaps millions of statues in the distance. They are all staring at the girl.

"Those were people?" Michiru finds herself saying, horrified.

"Every last one."

Michiru looks back in terror at the small girl, whose eyes seem to have become a deeper shade of purple. "No. No no no no no..." she says, stumbling back. She wants to be as far from this monster as possible, far away from here, anywhere away from here—

"Neptune, please," the girl says. Michiru's blue eyes widen upon hearing the name.

"You're wrong. I'm not this person Neptune. I don't know you. _THIS IS A DREAM, GODDAMNIT!_" She clenches her eyes shut and hopes to wake up in her bed, but when she opens her eyes again she finds that the girl has moved closer to her and is lightly touching her face.

"Wake up," the girl says. "I know you're in there somewhere. Please, Neptune. Wake up. Kill me."

"_NO!_" She strikes the girl's face, makes her fly through the air and slam against the statues. Something cracks, a loud, resounding noise in the silence, and as Michiru freezes a thousand million statues come crumbling down. The sky screeches, a loud metallic sound, and the statues all crumble into dust.

The wind begins to blow.

It picks up the dust and sends it flying toward the violinist.

"A dream, a dream, a dream a dream _a dream_," she repeats, but turns on her heel and runs from the dust storm. She runs for a long time.

Something giggles.

"Who's there?" she yells hysterically, not wanting to turn back around and face the dust storm.

The person only giggles in response.

"_Well?_"

A shadow darts past her; she only catches a glimpse of it before it is gone again. She keeps running.

"_STOP._" A strange voice comes from behind her.

The dust storm stops. Michiru's eyes widen as the noise ceases and she turns around to see what happened. She barely catches a glimpse of the dust frozen in time before a shadow with dark purple eyes leaps at her throat.

She awakes in her bed.

Michiru leans over and looks at the clock. It reads 3:42 a.m. She buries her face in her hands and cries. She cries dark, terrified sobs.

Somehow she manages to sleep through the rest of the night. At 6:30 a.m. her eyes snap open; her brain is unsure if she is in the dream or the real world. Even as she brushes her teeth, she is still not sure; what she has defined as the real world before is beginning to feel more like a dream than reality. Looking in the mirror, she examines her face; overall, it is as perfect as it has ever been, save for her eyes. Her eyes make her look as though she's seen things people can't fathom, even in their wildest nightmares.

In a way, that is accurate.

Michiru looks in the mirror. She spits out her toothpaste and washes it down the sink. As she places her toothbrush back on the counter, she decides to skip school today.

* * *

><p>More chapters coming soon, I promise.<p> 


	2. Chapter 2

I wish I owned Sailor Moon.

* * *

><p>She leaves her apartment hurriedly, half-convinced that if she remains, someone will inevitably call her to ask where she is and why she is not at school. She is dressed most unlike herself; instead of the school uniform or the dresses that characterize her, she is wearing an old pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Her hair, normally left down, is tied into a ponytail. She is not wearing any makeup.<p>

She hopes it will make her impossible to recognize. She wants no one to know where Kaioh Michiru, famous prodigy violinist, is going. She doesn't know herself.

She steps out into the warm Tokyo air and looks around. Everything that she defines as reality seems so unreal now, more like a dream—she walked out of her apartment half-expecting the buildings to be ruins, the people to be petrified statues, the sky to be red, the grass and sidewalk and road to be dead sand.

_No matter, _something tells her inside. _Everything will be like that soon._

Frightened, Michiru closes her eyes to block out the sights and hurries away from her apartment building. She doesn't know where she is going, but that doesn't matter, as long as she runs away, runs far away where dreams and destiny and the monster of the sands can't find her. She closes her eyes and hurtles herself forward, away from everything familiar. She runs down streets she's never taken before, she pushes through a crowd that is gathered around a seemingly-dead boy who wears a white shirt and green plaid pants and turns into an alleyway. Sunlight streams through the crowded buildings, falling in erratic stripes on the concrete of the alley. She squints as she steps into one of those stripes and the sun shines brightly in her eyes, temporarily blinding her. She squeezes her eyes shut. When she opens them again, she finds that the world has changed.

She steps out of the alleyway and into the harsh glare of the dying sun. She looks around. The crowd gathered around the boy has become a sea of statues. The boy has become a monster.

The monster's red eyes glitter as it swivels around to stare at Michiru, who is frozen in place as she looks at it. They stare at each other for several seconds, each waiting for the other to make a move.

"Neptune," a voice says, echoing through the blood-red sky, "this is Neptune. Kill her."

The monster's mouth opens, revealing several rows of sharp yellow teeth. It gnashes its fangs as it howls at Michiru. It leaps at her.

Finally, she runs.

She runs away from the monster, which chases her at a speed she never would have thought possible. Frightened, she pushes herself harder, makes herself sprint instead of run, but running has never been her forte. She looks around wildly, hoping for some water she can dive into, or even just the woman that had given her the water in her first dream—any amount of water would do.

There is none. The last lakes and rivers have dried up long ago. All that remains is the sand—the sand and the dry, brittle wind.

_Neptune, listen, _says a voice in her head. _You can't keep running like this. You have to fight it, Neptune!_

She pushes the voice away. She is firmly convinced that the monster is a hallucination.

The giant red leech roars behind her.

Her legs burn—running through sand has never been the easiest thing for her. They ache and scream and Michiru opens her mouth to scream as well, but finds herself with a mouthful of dust thanks to the sudden wind. She coughs, long, hacking coughs, and her stride slows just enough for the monster to catch up with her.

It overtakes her as suddenly as the world had changed in the alley—one moment she is running and the next she is lying on the ground, with blood red gashes written across her back. She screams in pain finally, flips over just in time to see the monster lunge straight for her throat, and

"Dead Scream," a voice says almost silently.

Before Michiru knows it, the monster is gone. A garnet-eyed woman clad in a sailor fuku stands before her.

"I can't keep helping you, you know," the woman says somewhat wistfully. "You have to awaken, Neptune. Wake up and find her."

Michiru is about to ask her what she means when spots appear before her eyes. She stiffens and slumps onto the ground. She blacks out.

* * *

><p>There is a man shaking her.<p>

Michiru opens her eyes and blinks groggily. The air smells faintly of motor oil and exhaust, and the man, she notices, is wearing the uniform of a mechanic. As the man sees her open her eyes, he stops shaking her and stares down at her, gaze concerned.

"How are you feeling?" he asks. "You were passed out in an alley. I brought you here."

"W...where am I?" she replies, sitting up—the world immediately begins to spin, and she clutches at her temple with a hand.

"A racetrack," he says quietly. "How are you feeling?" he asks again.

"Dizzy. Do you have water?"

He nods and stands up, walking to a nearby sink. Grabbing a cup, he fills it up and gives it to her. She takes it and begins to drink greedily, feeling as though she hasn't had water for several months. Her head clears as she gulps it down, and after she empties the cup she feels well enough to stand.

"Where should I put it?" she says.

"The cup? Just put it in the sink. I'll make Tenoh-kun take care of it later."

She doesn't know who the man is referring to, but she doesn't care. All that matters right now is that she feels much better than before.

"I'm Kaioh Michiru," she says, bowing to the man. "Thank you for your hospitality." She turns to leave, but then the man says, "Hey, don't you want to stay and watch the race? It's starting in a few minutes. It's Tenoh-kun's first time out on the track anyway—he's about your age."

She is about to shake her head no when curiosity gets the better of her. She thinks for a few seconds and says, "I would like that."

The man grins. "I'm Kameda Gendo, by the way. Just stick that cup in the sink and I'll show you to the stands."

* * *

><p>She sits down gingerly, not knowing what to expect. There are already cars flying around the track—she doesn't know which one this mysterious Tenoh-san is in, so she doesn't cheer, unlike the thousands of other people in the stands. "Ikari-san!" someone squeals next to her. "You're my idol!"<p>

Michiru sits there awkwardly for an hour, listening to the girl next to her fawn over this Ikari-san person. "Sign my butt!" the girl screams once; Michiru quietly scoots away from her then.

Honestly, Michiru finds this sport a little boring, and she is rather pleased when a scarlet car rockets past the finish line. As the fans go wild, she stands up to leave.

"Excuse me," she says to a white-haired man holding a little girl as she walks down the steps. Then she freezes.

The little girl has dark purple eyes.

Michiru shakes her head and forces the sight from her mind. "This is the real world," she tells herself. "That one—that other one—it doesn't exist."

She opens the gate of the stands and steps down onto the ground when the driver of the red car opens his door and steps out. She takes a glance at him and looks away.

She looks again.

It is a blond boy that steps out of that car—a beautiful blond boy, with surprisingly delicate features and wind-ruffled hair that almost covers his vivid green eyes.

Michiru is surprised to find herself blushing. She turns back around and looks with renewed interest at the track. The blond boy turns around to receive his medal—the back of the firesuit reads "TENOH" in large capital letters, but Michiru almost doesn't notice that, occupied as she is with staring at his ass.

It is only when Tenoh leaves the track that she goes back to her apartment.

After she is spent, she collapses on her bed and drifts into sleep.

* * *

><p>Readermarz: Thank you! :D<p>

As always, reviews make me squeal like a little girl.


	3. Chapter 3

Great. So I introduce a major character in the last chapter and don't even use her here. I mean, the entire end of the last chapter was all about Michiru fawning over Haruka, and what does the latter get? A mention in a single sentence.

I love my muse.

Sailor Moon still doesn't belong to me.

* * *

><p>The wind screeches as it picks up speed, and Michiru squints against it as her eyes dry. She blinks several times, but keeps her mouth firmly shut; she does not want to repeat what happened when she tried screaming last time.<p>

"You are learning," a light, childish voice says next to her. "Neptune."

Wide-eyed, Michiru's head snaps to look at the voice's source. It is the shadowed girl with purple eyes.

"Do you see this?" the girl asks, gesturing to the destroyed city before them. "I did this."

Michiru looks. There are countless statues, some of which she is beginning to recognize—one in particular, a girl with her hair in a strange odango style, attracts her attention.

"He is coming, Neptune. You will stop him or perish. You will stand against him or you will fall."

"Who?" Michiru asks finally.

"The great Pharaoh. The monster of the sands."

The wind that is howling in her ears suddenly dies. A thick blanket of silence settles over the two of them. The sand beneath her feet shifts excitedly, but makes no noise, and as Michiru looks up, she is shocked to see a hole in the blood-red sky. Inside of it is pure, utter darkness.

"I did this," the girl repeats, but her voice sounds almost as if she is underwater—strange, and thick, and obscured by some sort of veil. "I killed them all."

A horrifying noise resounds through the sky as the hole grows. It sounds not unlike the screech of metal scraping against metal, and it slowly grows louder as the girl speaks.

"Stop me," she begs. "Kill me before I can do this."

But Michiru doesn't hear her. Michiru has turned away from the maw of darkness and is running. Michiru runs as far away as she can.

As the monster of the sands descends from the sky, the noise grows to an unbearable volume and the sand begins to scrape at her feet as she runs. She clasps her hands over her ears and keeps running—after a few seconds, however, she feels something warm and sticky on her left palm. She lifts it to her eyes. It is blood.

Her ears begin to ring, followed by a painful itch inside of her eardrum that is almost too much to bear.

The monster falls on Tokyo.

A strong wind comes, so strong it knocks Michiru over. She screams as she thrusts her hands out to stop herself from landing face-first on the gritty sand, but it ends up on her face anyway. A wave of heat comes next, and as Michiru tries to pick herself up off of the ground it washes over her, burning her entire body. Her hands scream as she uses them to push herself up and off of the sand, and she screams again as well—the pain is almost too much.

She takes a few steps forward, trying to ignore how dead her feet feel. Finally, when she can't take it anymore, she picks one up and looks at its sole.

Her foot is badly burnt. It is black at the edges. Both the pad of her foot and her heel are burnt down to the bone.

Michiru looks at her own bones for a few seconds.

She looks back at the city—the girl is still standing where she had awoken, and has not followed her. She meets the girl's dark purple eyes for a moment.

Then she looks at the monster.

It is far different from the boy-monster she encountered yesterday. The boy-monster's form was somewhat akin to a leech—this monster, Pharaoh or whatever the girl called it, is more akin to a giant amorphous blob.

She stares at it, and then it opens its eyes. All fifteen thousand of them.

They all look at her.

Michiru opens her mouth in horror as she sees the void reflected in its eyes. That is all she has time to do before she, too, becomes a statue.

And then she wakes up in her bed.

Shaking, she holds her hands in front of her face. To her relief, they are not covered in blood nor are they made of stone.

"How can I do anything against that?" she asks herself, burying her face in her hands. "I can't fight that—I can't fight a god."

"You're not doing it alone, you know."

There is a woman standing in front of the doors that lead to her balcony. She can only see the silhouette of the woman, however, thanks to the moonlight that shines through the clear doors. But it is enough to tell that the woman is tall, is wearing a rather short shirt, and has extremely long hair.

"I thought you were just part of the dream," Michiru finds herself saying. "You're the one who gave me water."

"Yes."

"How did you get in here?"

"I can't tell you that."

"Then what are you doing here?"

"To tell you that you can't keep running from destiny. But that you can fight it, Neptune, because you're not alone. Together, with your partner, you can destroy the monster of the sands."

"My partner?" Michiru wrings the coverlet idly.

"The dream is real, Neptune. What you see in the dream will happen if you don't stop it."

Her eyebrows furrow. "No. No, I won't."

The woman's surprise leaks through to her voice, and something inside of Michiru tells her that surprising this woman is not an easy thing to do. "Neptune, be reasonable!" she protests.

"Do you really think I can fight that?" Michiru asks, her voice raising. "For anyone to fight that is absolute suicide."

The woman studies her carefully. "You're terrified," she says quietly after a few moments.

"No, I'm not!" Michiru yells, but her voice cracks on the last word. She stands up out of bed, dragging the sheets to the floor. "Who are you to invade my life and demand I battle a god?"

"Neptune, everything will be destroyed if you don't take up arms! Everything! You're willing to sacrifice the world for your own happiness?"

Tenoh suddenly flashes across Michiru's mind, and she freezes in the middle of reaching for a jar to throw at the woman. She suddenly feels a large burden on her shoulders, though she is not sure whether it is of guilt or destiny, and slowly lifts her hand from the jar.

"What do I have to do?" she says, feeling suddenly tired.

"Take this." The woman holds out her hand; in it is a small aquamarine stick topped with a similarly-colored crescent. "I'm sorry it has to be this way, Neptune."

Michiru takes it, thinking of Tenoh the entire time. And there is a bright blue flash.

When she can see again, she sees that she is dressed in a sailor fuku not unlike the one the woman was wearing the other day when she saved her from the boy-monster—it's just colored differently. She feels the pressure of a choker around her neck and a heavy metal something on her forehead, but the burden on her shoulders weighs more than anything else.

"It's good to see you again, Neptune," the woman says.

"I don't want to do this," Michiru admits, voice quavering slightly.

"Neither do I."

"Then what purpose do we have? What am I supposed to do?"

"It will take a while to explain."

It takes the rest of the night to explain, and by the end of it all Michiru has caught is "we're finding the Holy Grail" and "people have crystals inside of them."

* * *

><p>ReaderMarz: Sorry about the lack of funniness in this chapter. But thank you for all of the compliments! And yes, Michiru is sort of a fangirl when she isn't being so serious.<p>

James Birdsong: Thank you!


	4. Chapter 3: Deleted Scene

Warning! Stupidity incoming! This chapter is much more like my parody story Red Wine than Monster of the Sands, so if you're not one for absolute stupidity, then try to pretend this chapter doesn't exist.

* * *

><p>THE MONSTER OF THE SANDS<p>

CHAPTER THREE

DELETED SCENE

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><p>"I—explain that again," Michiru begs, and the woman sitting across from her sighs and says, "We are on a mission."<p>

"Okay."

"Our mission is to find the Holy Grail."

"Mm-hmm."

"We can find the Holy Grail by gathering three mystic objects called Talismans."

"Talismans?"

"Yes."

"Okay, go on."

"These Talismans are hidden inside of people."

"Where inside of them?"

"Their heart—more specifically, the crystallized essence of their heart."

"...This is where it confuses me. What do you mean by crystal essence?"

"I mean people have crystals inside of them called heart crystals. Look, I'm not the one making this shit up. Blame the writers."

"Okay, continue."

"The Talismans are inside of these crystals."

"So how do we get to them if they're inside of the crystals which are inside of people?"

"We rip the crystals out."

"But how?"

"We wait until the enemy rips their crystals out, because while they have methods of doing that, we don't, for whatever reason."

"But can't we develop methods?"

"NO! Just go along with it, okay?"

"Jeez. You don't have to be so mean. So do we have a way to know who has the Talismans, or are we going to let the enemy run around and randomly rip people's hearts out?"

"No. We're doing this blindly."

"...So we're going to needlessly sacrifice hundreds of people for the possibility of getting three magical artifacts which will create the MacGuffin we need?"

"Yes."

Michiru stares at the woman for a moment, shocked. "This war makes no sense," she says. "I—I changed my mind. I'm not doing this." She puts the stick the woman had given her earlier down and slides it across the table to her.

"What? You can't quit! What about the world?"

"I said, _I don't want to do this!_" Michiru shoves the stick in the woman's face and storms off.

The woman sits quietly at the table, staring at the stick. "What did I just do?" she asks herself. "What just happened?"

* * *

><p>Dawnlight-6: Thank you! This story is actually a bit influenced by your style, if you can't tell. Not that I've been studying it or anything... *shifty eyes*<p>

ReaderMarz: Oh, I know. I was kidding with you. And no, she doesn't understand. At all.

James Birdsong: This chapter is so different in style it's not even funny. But thank you for all of your kind words!

Dream: Okay, you caught me. I'm a closet Evangelion fan. And I never find any stories about Michiru before she awoke Haruka either, except for Bainaku's wonderful origin story Morpheus. It's that lack of Michiru stories that made me write this, actually.

As always, reviews make me squeal in happiness every time I receive one.


	5. Chapter 4

I checked with the United States Patent and Trademark office, and sadly, I still don't own Sailor Moon.

* * *

><p>The dreams are strangely absent as Michiru sleeps—sleeps soundly for the first time in what feels like forever—and as she rolls over onto her other side, her arms stretch across the bed as though she is reaching for someone who isn't there. Her long fingers grasp at thin air, trying to catch the wind, and she sighs unconsciously as her senses quietly tell her that no one is there. But it doesn't feel right—the part of Michiru's brain that has awoken today insists that someone is supposed to be there, next to her.<p>

She grumbles and rolls over onto her stomach, burying her face in her pillow.

She feels incredibly well-rested when she wakes up the next morning—she sits up and stretches, grinning—and she can already tell that the day will be one of those days that seem so rare this year. A perfect day.

She stands up and groans, walking into the bathroom and examining her face. Her hair is perfect, as usual, and she does little to muss it as she reaches for a washcloth to wash her face with. She reaches down to the side of the sink and unexpectedly hits something almost cylindrical.

She grabs it and brings it up to her eyes. It is the stick the woman had given her yesterday.

Michiru suddenly remembers all that she and the woman had spoken of and the weight on her shoulders that will eventually become familiar returns. She bites her lip as she stares at it, feeling much older as she ponders her duty.

"I don't want to do this," she says to herself, repeating her words to the woman yesterday.

Nevertheless, after she dresses herself for school, she tucks it in her sleeve.

She arrives at school unscathed by the bluster of early-morning Tokyo, and as she sits through her classes the stick chafes against her wrist, a constant reminder of duty. Lunch comes and goes, and she barely tastes whatever substance they are serving today as, for the first time, she sits alone and apart from her friends. They hem and haw as she sits down at a table alone, eventually concluding that prodigy violinist Kaioh Michiru has decided she is too good for them.

She does not bother to tell them the truth. For the truth is too fantastic to be naught but fiction.

And then fifth period comes. Chemistry—as she studies the familiar formulas and compounds, a sense of peace comes over her. It is an experiment the class is doing today, and Michiru almost-gleefully takes the vial of water that is handed to her. As she works her way through the instructions, her teacher absentmindedly grabs a pen to start writing grades in.

The world goes red.

Everything freezes but Michiru and the pen, which is shifting and morphing and becoming what looks like a large pen-shaped woman. As it finishes its transformation, the world goes back to normal, save for the fact that there is a large pen-shaped woman standing on the teacher's desk.

"PLUMA!" it yells, mouth opening to reveal a pale white tongue with an inky-black star stained on its center. The tongue slithers out of its mouth and wraps itself around the teacher several times.

By now, the students have all fled the room in terror. Michiru is the only one left.

She pulls the stick out and raises it high. "NEPTUNE PLANET POWER, MAKE-UP!" she yells, not knowing how she even knows what to say. She flashes a bright aquamarine, and when it dims she is wearing the same sailor fuku outfit she had worn yesterday.

She immediately looks down at herself, marveling at how short the skirt is and wondering where the clothes even come from. She takes a few steps forward and shouts, "Heralding the dawn of a new era, Sailor Neptune! Fighting gracefully!"

She stops and blinks. "Where did that come from?" she asks herself.

But the daimon has already noticed her. It drops the teacher before the Pure Heart extraction finishes and turns to Michiru. "INK BLASTER!" it says loudly and, strangely enough, in English, and a thick black liquid spews from its eyes and toward Michiru, who attempts to dodge it and falls on her ass. She looks at the daimon just in time for her body to be covered with the thick liquid.

"Oh my god, this is disgusting," she moans to herself as she stands up, dripping ink everywhere. "Why did I agree to do this?"

She runs at the daimon and punches it in the face, only to discover that it is made out of plastic. Her fist screams in pain as she shakes it a few times. So she kicks it instead—and this is the first thing that has any real effect, as the plastic where she kicks it cracks and shatters. It is then that she realizes she's wearing high heels.

She quickly puts the daimon in a headlock as it yells in pain and tries to break its neck in two. It stares at her before it punches her in the gut and sends her flying across the room, landing painfully on a laboratory table.

The daimon turns back to her teacher and licks him again. A bright light begins to emanate from his chest as his Pure Heart materializes in front of him. The daimon grabs it greedily and begins to scurry out of the door.

Michiru looks between him and the escaping daimon and leaps from the table. She soon realizes that she needs to stop the daimon, and fast, else it escape with her favorite teacher's Pure Heart that may or may not be a Talisman.

Though she doesn't know what she's doing, Michiru holds her hands up toward the ceiling and says, "DEEP..."

She focuses on the daimon, and wills the power building in her hands toward it. She thrusts her hands out, releasing the power, and as a giant blue ball sails toward the daimon she finishes, "SUBMERGE!"

The daimon has enough time to look back before it is completely crushed by the immense pressure in the giant blue ball, and the Pure Heart flies out of its hands. Michiru grabs it and looks at it skeptically.

"Doesn't look like a Talisman," she mutters. She stares at it, as if expecting something to happen. "Nope. Doesn't seem like a Talisman."

She looks back at the daimon, which is now a pen again, and sighs. She rubs the corner of an eye and walks toward her nearly-dead Chemistry teacher, leaning the Pure Heart down and letting it drift back into the man.

Almost immediately he awakens, and as he looks up at Michiru he says quietly, "Who are you?"

She thinks of answering truthfully, but reconsiders it. It would only be a hassle if people knew she was like one of those anime people—a magical girl. She looks down at her sailor fuku.

"I'm Sailor Neptune," she says, feeling the weight of destiny on her shoulders once again. "I'm just a friend. Here to help."

* * *

><p>Dawnlight-6: Haha, I can't wait until they meet either. But Michiru's character is seriously making this story write itself. I'm not the one in charge of it like I was with my other fics. And it wouldn't be anime without needlessly complicated and nonsensical plots, now would it?<p> 


	6. Chapter 5

Sailor Moon: it doesn't belong to me.

* * *

><p>"Thank you," she says softly as the employee hands her the ticket stub, and walks into the stands. She doesn't know why she is doing this—after a long and exhausting day of school, combined with the daimon attack, she is more than ready to fall into bed and drift into unconsciousness. But something inside of her had whispered to her, urged her to come here, and at its insisting, she had taken the subway over to a nearby station and purchased a ticket for the five o'clock race. All she knows is that Tenoh is in it, as Kameda had waved to her as she walked in.<p>

"Hey, Kaioh-san," he said in a friendly sort of way, walking over to her as she waited in line. "Here to see Tenoh-kun again? He's a great racer, isn't he?"

She was surprised—she didn't even know Tenoh was racing again. "He's in this race?" she asked.

"Yup." Whatever Kameda had to say next was cut short as another man called his name and beckoned him over. He looked back at her apologetically and said, "Sorry I can't talk longer, the crew needs me in the pit. Nice seeing you again, though."

She shakes herself out of the memory and sits down on the bench, pulling her sketchbook out of her bag for a reason she is unsure of. She carefully takes her 2B pencil from her ear and opens the sketchbook to a blank page.

She waits for the race to begin.

She spots Tenoh quickly—his bright red car, adorned with the logos of his sponsors, is easy to spot among the others. Something draws her eyes to him, and as he gets in the car she is almost entranced. Her pencil moves over the paper of its own volition as she watches him speak to his pit crew before he puts his helmet on. After a few minutes, he gives them a thumbs-up and grins and Michiru's heart flutters at the sight of his smile.

He turns to the grid and slides the helmet over his head, revving up the engine and taking his place at the start line.

The lights above the checkered line blink as the countdown starts. The crowd yells in high-pitched glee as the cars begin to roar, their engines revving up as they prepare to begin.

"Three!" a voice yells above the crowd, and Michiru finally looks down at what she has been sketching. It is a picture of Tenoh's face—young, and surprisingly delicate, and very, very attractive.

"Two!"

As Michiru stares at the sketch, something dawns on her that is very strange. She looks at her sketch of Tenoh—looks at Tenoh's cheekbones, and eyes, and the curve of his chin, and realizes that _Tenoh is a girl._

Michiru blinks a few times. Her eyes snap to the red car, which is zooming around a corner, and a prickling feeling settles in her stomach as she realizes the person in that car, the person she is beginning to have a small crush on, is completely female.

* * *

><p>Kameda Gendo pulls the tires from Tenoh's car as he pulls into the pit and throws them to the ground. Reaching back, he pulls a new tire from the stack and quickly fits it to the car. A few seconds after pulling into the pit, Tenoh accelerates away and back into the race.<p>

"Sure is hectic, isn't it?" Kameda comments to one of the other members of the crew as he sits down in a chair and reaches for his drink. As he grabs the cup, it flashes brightly; the world goes red as it becomes a giant... thing.

The entire pit crew, including the other teams, scream in horror as the monster grabs Kameda by the throat. "BEBIDA!" it shouts as it hosts the man into the air and throws him into the concrete wall.

As this is happening, a man from another team runs to race control. He jogs up the stairs and smashes the door down. The men inside turn to him, shocked, and demand to know what he is doing here.

"A-another man—" he says, out of breath, "one of the pit crew is being attacked by a monster."

* * *

><p>As the safety car pulls out of the pit, the crowd falls silent. They watch with confusion as it overtakes the lead racer, Tenoh, who slows down to match its speed. "What's going on?" Michiru hears someone next to her ask. "Is someone hurt?"<p>

By the end of the question, Michiru is out of her seat. Something dark is here—she can feel it in her bones—and as she blinks she has a sudden vision of Kameda down in the pit. But as she pulls the stick from her sleeve, she realizes that she can't just transform here—it would attract too much attention and give her identity away. Instead, she ducks into the restroom and, after making sure there is no one in the stalls, holds the stick high and says, "NEPTUNE PLANET POWER, MAKE UP!"

The sea roars in her ears as she feels her humanity slip away from her. Suddenly frightened, she tries to grasp at it, to grab it back and hold it to herself, but it slips through her fingers and disappears.

When she opens her eyes, she is not fully human anymore. Though she hadn't felt it in her first battle thanks to the adrenalin rush of it, she now feels fear.

Sucking in a deep breath to relax herself, she runs out of the bathroom and to the pit, taking the way Kameda had showed her. "What's going on?" she shouts as she stops in front of the garages that make up the pit, but her question is answered for her as she sees the glow of a Pure Heart.

"BEBIDA!" the daimon shouts as it grasps the Pure Heart greedily, ready to go back to wherever it came from. It looks around, but its grin fades as it spots Michiru.

"Heralded by the dawn of a new era, Sailor Neptune! Fighting gracefully!" she says, striking a pose for a reason she is unable to discern. Her heart pounds in her chest as the daimon's face contorts with rage, and the monster sticks the heart crystal inside of its lid as it shouts, "WOULD YOU LIKE A DRINK WITH THAT?"

Its arms transform into giant straws and begin to shoot shards of ice at Michiru. Before she can react, one nicks her arm, drawing blood. "Itai," she hisses, grabbing her forearm with her other hand. Undeterred by this minor injury, however, she rushes forward and punches the daimon's body.

Since it is made of reinforced paper, however, the only thing the punch creates is a dent marked with stress lines. Michiru looks up at the daimon's face quickly, then grabs its lid. The monster growls and spins out of her grip, but the hard plastic of the lid tears through Michiru's gloves and into her skin. She rips her bleeding hands away, her heart pounding in her chest, and decides to try another attack. It had worked this afternoon, when that pen-daimon had attacked, so why wouldn't it work now?

"DEEP..." Michiru yells, bringing her pulsing hands over her head and forming a ball of energy, "SUBMERGE!"

The glowing teal ball hits the drink-daimon square in the chest and it sails through the air, landing against a stack of tires. As it weakly tries to stand, Michiru marches over to it and tears its lid off, grabbing the Pure Heart out and crushing the daimon egg inside in her fist.

The daimon reverts back to its original form—a spilled drink. As Michiru takes several deep breaths, she walks over to Kameda and carefully places his Pure Heart back in.

As he begins to stir, she runs away.

* * *

><p>The radio inside of Haruka's helmet crackles and hisses as race control comes back on. "The situation has been resolved," it says, "and we will resume the race from a rolling start in one minute."<p>

Her bright green eyes narrow as she prepares to floor the pedal, and her grip tightens on the steering wheel. "Good," she mutters to herself as the safety car turns into the pit, and she slams the pedal down. Part of her wants to know what happened, but the other part tells her not to ask.

As she rounds a corner, she catches sight of a beautiful woman with aquamarine-colored hair, but when she looks again, the girl is gone.

* * *

><p>ReaderMarz: Action scenes actually aren't my thing, and I'm not very practiced with writing them; I actually much prefer writing dialogue to writing action. If this story was written in my usual style, perhaps 90% of it would be just dialogue. I'm really writing in this style because it's fun to change how I write occasionally. (And as for the "someone-should-be-next-to-me-in-bed" thing, thank you! I just stuck that in because I thought it would fit nicely.)<p>

James Birdsong: Thank you! And the deleted scene is officially uncanon, but that was actually part of chapter three originally before I deleted it; after all, if that had made it into the published story, the story would have ended right there.


	7. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: Do I even have to have this anymore? I think I've made my point.

Sorry about this being so late. I don't have an excuse for this one being late like the last chapter (I was studying F1 to make it as believable as I could), except for "I was busy for three-ish days."

* * *

><p>It is only two days later when Michiru falls ill.<p>

She awakes from a dreamless sleep with her inflamed, throbbing hands reaching out to the other side of the bed. As she lifts the covers from her body, her hands scream in pain; as she soon discovers, merely touching anything is pure agony.

She swings her legs to the floor, but does not stand up. Instead she takes a closer look at her palms to see what's wrong with them. Her eyes peer at her swollen fingers, at the dark purple lines in the center of her palms where the daimon's lid had sliced through her hands, and finally at the black that eats at the edges of her skin. She curls them into a fist and they burn in agony.

Michiru winces, firmly deciding to skip school. She cannot attend like this; it would invite too many questions. Besides, her hands burn in pain from just curling into a loose fist; she grimaces as she imagines holding a pencil the entire day. Just thinking of it is enough to make her hands throb.

Gingerly picking up the phone and receiving a sharp pain in her palm for it, she dials the school and waits for them to pick up.

"Hello?" the secretary says as she picks up, sounding utterly bored.

"Hello," Michiru says in a perfect imitation of her mother, "this is Kaioh Yuuka, Kaioh Michiru's mother. I am just calling to inform you that she will not be in school today; she's come down with a cold, you see, and doesn't want to infect anyone. She'll be back in school tomorrow."

"Kaioh Michiru. All right, have a nice day, Kaioh-san."

"You too," and Michiru hangs up. The throbbing in her hands flare as she places them back in her lap; they did not react well to holding a phone. Or moving at all.

As she lets her hands fall limp, something in the back of her mind whispers to her, tells her that she is not sick. She is poisoned.

* * *

><p>The sky turns a deep red. Haruka can feel it dying.<p>

The earth, the city; both are already dead. But the sky—the wonderfully blue sky—still, it lives. But someone has poisoned it. Has devoured its spirit. Has eaten its soul.

Haruka clenches her fists. The wind howls behind her, a testament to her rage. She bares her teeth as the sky dies. All she needs is to know who killed it. And then she will kill them.

The world turns a deep scarlet red. The sands behind her whip to and fro at the behest of the wind, and as they do something hidden by the sandstorm screeches in pain. She cannot tell who it is. But it sounds like a woman.

Haruka is terrified, inwardly. On the outside she will never admit it. But secretly, she knows.

The sky is dead. She is next.

So despite her anger, her rage, she runs. Not to the enemy, but from it. Her anger and rage—they are merely a facade. Designed to keep her enemies wary, and her allies afraid.

Who are her allies? Who is the enemy, for that matter? She does not know. And as she ponders the questions, feet pounding the earth as she flees, something invades her thoughts that gives her pause.

Who is she?

"Tenoh Haruka," she would have rumbled proudly any other day. But today, she is unsure. She doesn't know who she is.

As the vision clears, she crosses the finish line. The checkered flag swings down.

* * *

><p>She takes every sort of medicine she can in the hopes of finding a cure for the poison plaguing her hands. Her senshi powers keep them from having much effect on her, however; as soon as they enter her blood, they dissolve into nothingness.<p>

Finally, she decides to go to the doctor. Hiding her swollen hands in the pockets of her dress, she leaves her apartment and takes the elevator down to the first floor. She flashes a demure smile to those who wave at her, trying not to let them see how much pain she is in.

Thankfully, there is a hospital nearby, next to her school; she hurriedly walks to it, eager to find the cause of the poison. The automatic doors swing open for her and she enters the lobby, walking up to the woman who sits at the front desk.

"What can I do for you?" the woman says with a foreign accent, looking up from her paperwork and adjusting her glasses. Michiru says nothing; she only pulls her hands out of her pockets and lifts them in front of her. The woman's eyes go wide as she sees the swollen fingers, the purple veins, and the blackness that eats at the edges of Michiru's hands, and wordlessly, she picks up the phone.

"Ah, Dr. Mizuno?" she says, voice shaking. "Please come to the lobby." She places the phone down and turns to Michiru. "You can just... sit down. The doctor will be here in a little bit." The woman bites her lip, looking like she wants to say more, but turns back to her paperwork.

A blue-haired woman walks into the lobby a few minutes later, lips curled into a worried frown. "Jo-san," she greets the receptionist. "What's wrong?"

"Do you see that woman with the aquamarine hair?" Jo says, indicating Michiru. "Something's wrong with her hands. I don't have a medical degree like you do, but even I can tell that something's wrong."

Dr. Mizuno nods, and walks over to Michiru. "I am Dr. Mizuno," she introduces herself. "I'll be your doctor for this visit."

"I am Kaioh Michiru. Pleased to meet you."

"All right. Now if you'll just follow me, Kaioh-san, we'll take a look at what's wrong with your hands."

Michiru follows the doctor into a small room. Hopping onto the examination table, she sits down and takes her hands out of her pockets, holding them up in front of her.

The doctor inhales sharply, though she tries not to let Michiru hear it. "Kami-sama," she breathes, and gently takes one of Michiru's hands in her own. "Does this hurt?" she asks as she squeezes a tender finger.

"I—" Michiru's voice falters as a sharp pain shoots through her arm. "Yes," she gasps.

The doctor is silent for a moment, and then stands up. She turns to the desk opposite the table and rifles through a drawer; finally, she picks up a blood lancet and, strangely enough, a bag of ice—unmelted, despite being kept at room temperature. "Hold this," Dr. Mizuno says quietly, placing the bag in Michiru's left hand. "If just squeezing your finger caused you terrible pain, then I can't imagine what pricking it will do. We're going to numb your hand as much as possible so that I can collect a blood sample without too much pain," she explains, sitting down in a nearby chair. "While we're waiting for your hand to numb, do you have any idea what might have caused this?"

"I..." She doesn't know whether to lie or not, but finally settles on a half-truth. "I crushed something shaped vaguely like an egg two days ago with my hands. A few minutes earlier, I had cut my palms open on some hard plastic—they had horrible gashes in them, and I guess the fragments of the egg-thing got inside."

It isn't her most eloquent of speeches, but it does the job as Dr. Mizuno sits back in the chair with a pensive expression. "Okay. I'm guessing you don't know what the egg-thing was?"

"No."

"All right." Dr. Mizuno looks down at Michiru's hand, which is beginning to lose all feeling. "Is your hand numb?"

"Numb enough, I think." She places the bag of ice down and holds out her reddish-purple hand to Dr. Mizuno. "Go ahead."

"Okay. This might hurt a little," the blue-haired doctor warns, and gently presses into her finger with the lancet. A terrible pain envelops her hand, but she tries not to let it affect her as the lancet pushes through her skin. Eventually, a small drop of blood forms, coating the plastic of the lancet, and Dr. Mizuno pulls it away. "I'm going to run a few tests on this," she says as she stands up. "I'll be back in a bit."

A few minutes after the doctor leaves, a strange garnet-eyed woman walks into the room and sits down. Michiru does not recognize her.

"Michiru-chan," she says, shocking the violinist with her informality. "Don't act so surprised. I've known you for ages. I'm just here to tell you what to do about your hands."

She pulls Michiru's hands out to examine in such a manner that no pain comes. "I've seen this before," she says quietly. "You have the shards of a daimon egg trapped in your hands. They are trying to turn you into one of them. Failing, of course, thanks to your senshi powers, but still having an effect."

"What can I do to get them out?" Michiru asks eagerly.

The woman's back heaves with a heavy sigh. "One way," she says grimly. "You need to cut them out."

Michiru blinks. She cannot believe what she's just heard. "What do you mean?" she says quietly.

"I mean, you need to take something sharp and preferably sterilized and cut the shards out of your hands."

Horror dawns on Michiru's face. She pulls her hands away from the woman sharply, something that causes the terrible pain to resurface. "No," she says firmly.

"Then live with this for the rest of your immortal life, Michiru," the woman says.

The violinist jumps up and leaps from the examination table. In an instant, she has run out the door and into the streets, heading back to her own apartment.

"And leave me with the bill," Setsuna says, sighing. "God damn, I hate having to be so mysterious." She stands up and trudges from the room, not looking forward to the expensive bill that would inevitably come. "Whoever made Taboo is an asshole."

* * *

><p>The next day, Michiru comes back to school. No one asks her why her hands are so heavily bandaged; they are too frightened by the atmosphere that surrounds her to even get close. Her eyes are different, too; changed. Before, they were calm, sometimes tired, but always friendly. And now they are fatigued and resigned.<p>

Daimon egg shards, glistening with blood, line her trashcan. A serrated knife, its edge coated in dried blood, lays on the counter nearby. It looks as though it's been recently used, as the handle is also caked in blood.

She does not bother to speak with anyone.

She fights that day, and the next, and the day after that. Rare are the nights when she isn't out fighting, and she slowly finds her life becoming consumed with her duties as a senshi through the next few months. Her grades begin to slip, and she falls asleep in class much more often; indeed, the only things that give her solace are her violin and her sketchbook. She begins to use them much more often than before, and as the months pass, she slowly withdraws from the world into her own. Where the only things that exist are her sketchbook, her violin, and the monsters.

And then, one night, she dreams of a woman.

* * *

><p>ReaderMarz: I don't pshaw action scenes, I'm just not that good at them. :D And yeah, I thought that would be a neat way for Michiru to realize Haruka's true gender.<p>

James Birdsong: Thank you!

As usual, reviews are very, very welcome. You will gain my instant approval if you scroll down a little bit and click that review button and leave even a short note. If you want to give constructive criticism, all the better!


	8. Chapter 7

I was planning to have something vaguely like a lemon in here, but I _am _trying to keep this story rated T. Don't worry-I'm just as disappointed as you are. (maybe someday.)

Disclaimer: It is really fun coming up with the daimon names. Since the daimons usually have English names in the Japanese anime, I thought it would be fun to give them names in another language since this fic is English.

* * *

><p>She tugs at Uranus's collar, pulling the taller woman forward and into a brief kiss. "Good luck," she says softly as she pulls away, smiling wistfully and sadly at the senshi of the winds. "Stay alive."<p>

"You know I always have," Uranus says, trying to sound confident to make up for her fear as she hefts the Space Sword onto her shoulder. She turns and walks to her shuttle, but pauses about halfway and looks back at Neptune. "You—you stay alive too," she says, "please. For me."

"Yes," Neptune agrees. "Uranus?"

"Yes?"

"I love you."

It is the taller woman's turn to smile, her eyes clouded with loneliness. "I love you too," she says, and blows a kiss to the senshi of the seas. "See you in a few months," she says optimistically as she enters the shuttle.

As it lifts off, Neptune turns back to the destroyed ruin of Castle Triton. Above the roar of the shuttle's engines, a woman screams. She is being flayed by a youma.

Neptune runs at the monster.

A few months never comes.

* * *

><p>The scars on her hands burn as Michiru wakes up, covered in a cold sweat. She wrings her coverlet tightly, trying to stop the pain shooting through her hands, the telltale pain that foreshadows a daimon attack. There will be another one today.<p>

She glances over at the clock. _4:30_, it reads. _Saturday, November 26. _

"Saturday," she says to herself, quietly thankful that she won't have to deal with school today. The stinging in her hands slowly fades, and she looks at her palms.

Two thin lines, nearly identical, run across her palms. They are speckled with black dots where the shards of the daimon egg had bitten into her skin—the black dots are buried in dark red lines where she had sliced her hands open. She has not touched the knife she used since then.

Today her palms are an angry red—they signal an imminent daimon attack. She sighs, and climbs out of bed, her vision clouding as she stands up. She is momentarily dizzy, but she shakes it off quickly and walks out to her balcony.

She never gets enough sleep these days.

The moon is strong and bright, and Michiru wonders if there are any others like her. She knows of two others at this moment; the mysterious green-haired woman and the tall warrior from her dreams—Uranus. And yet she wonders, perhaps, if there are more senshi.

She shakes the thoughts off, reminding herself that she has a job to do. Grabbing hold of a brick sticking out of the wall, she clambers onto the roof and transforms into Neptune. She feels her humanity slipping away from her, but she doesn't try and grab it back anymore; she has simply learned to accept the fact that she is not fully human. As the transformation finishes, she closes her eyes and stands up tall, ignoring the wind that shifts all around her.

Yes, the daimon will come today.

* * *

><p>Elsa Grey pushes herself to run a mile more, though her lungs burn from the cool night air. They strain with every breath she takes, but she does not bother to slow down; rest can wait until after she has trained.<p>

It is five-thirty in the morning; a typical morning, by all standards. Elsa had gotten up at four-thirty to come train, just as she does all mornings. After all, how else can she beat Haruka except through strenuous training?

Her shoulders sag as she slows to a stop, having finished her mile. She is wont to grab her water bottle and pour the entire thing down her throat, but today she feels overcome by the sudden longing to collapse and lay in the grass, perhaps falling asleep while she looks at the sky. Being a creature of habit, however, she resists the urge and grabs her bottle, unscrewing the cap and drinking its contents greedily.

This is what prevents the daimon from killing her as it lands in the grass she was about to lay in, thrown back by one of Neptune's powerful fists.

Elsa freezes in the middle of taking a large gulp. It goes down the wrong pipe thanks to this, and she sputters and coughs and most of all, backs away from that whatever-the-hell-it-is. "TECLADO!" the thing shouts as it stands up, and she finally sees that it is a giant keyboard with legs.

"What the fu..." she begins to say before the keyboard's foe charges out of the gym and toward it. Seeing this, the monster-keyboard-thing grins before it yells, "KEEP YOUR FINGERS ON THE HOME ROW!"

A circuit board launches itself from the top of the keyboard, heading straight for its foe. The aquamarine-haired woman leaps out of the way, but not quite in time; the silicon manages to graze her right arm, leaving a nasty cut. Immediately the woman's left hand flies toward the wound, beginning to pick out small shards of silicon that aren't even big enough to see. And yet she presumably picks all of them out, and in record time too; a few seconds after the attack, the woman counters with an attack of her own. "DEEP..." she says, focusing her attack at the open slot the circuit board had come out of, "...SUBMERGE!"

The monster-keyboard-thing screams as the attack hurtles toward it, but the attack has no effect. "JUST KIDDING!" The monster laughs as the energy disappears. "TRY TO STAY AT A GOOD SPEED OF 40 WORDS PER MINUTE!"

It rears back and punches the woman across the face. Something cracks loudly, and a few moments later Elsa notices what has happened; the woman's nose is now strangely crooked and is beginning to swell up.

"Dammit," the woman swears, clutching at her broken nose. She grabs the monster-keyboard and punches it as much as she can before it squirms out of her grip, causing one of its keys to fall off. Eyebrows raising, she leans back and kicks it as hard as she can in that specific spot.

Something inside of it shatters. The monster-keyboard's eyes barely have time to widen before its body breaks in two, exposing a large grey-ish egg.

The woman steps on it, crunching it beneath her heel.

Suddenly exhausted, the woman sits down on one of the bleachers, clutching her broken nose with a gloved hand. She closes her eyes tightly, obviously in pain. "They seem to get more and more resistant to Deep Submerge with each new one," she mutters to herself. "How am I going to fix this?"

Elsa clears her throat. "I can realign your nose, if that's what you're referring to," she says politely. "I took a course on treating broken bones a while back, so I can realign it."

The woman jumps as Elsa begins to speak. "I—I hadn't realized you were there," she says, looking toward the runner. Her blue eyes are haunted, and Elsa shudders as she sees them. "Would you?"

"Sure." Elsa sits down next to the woman. "I'm Elsa Grey. I go to this school." She pulls a towel from her bag and hands it to the woman. "Here, blow your nose into this. You're not going to ruin it, so just blow your nose."

The woman obliges, blowing her nose almost elegantly. Elsa chuckles, amused despite the situation at the elegance the woman displays in just blowing her nose. "Okay. Hold still. This'll probably hurt."

Forming a small triangle with her hands, she places it snugly at the top of the woman's nose. "Breathe in through your mouth," she advises, and the woman does so. She squeezes her palms around the woman's nose and slowly drags them down toward the woman's chin.

"Does it look all right?" the woman asks quietly.

Elsa surveys her handiwork. The nose is still crooked, but much less now than before. "Let me try one more time. It's a lot less crooked now, but I'm pretty sure you want it to be straight."

She tries again, and this time the crookedness of the woman's nose is almost unnoticeable. "That's as good as it'll get, I guess," she says. "If there's any sort of crookedness left, it's unnoticeable."

The woman nods, and stands up. "Thank you," she says, smiling sadly. "I'm Sailor Neptune, by the way. Pleased to meet you."

And with that, she runs off into the shadows. In a few seconds, she is gone.

* * *

><p>James Birdsong: I try. Hope you like this chapter, too.<p>

Swinging Cloud: You should have seen the first fic I submitted to this site about four or five years back-it was called Betrothal, and it was an Avatar (Zutara) fic. I took it down because it was so goddamn embarrassing. Any sort of improvement has been through lots and lots of practice since then, so I always welcome critiques. So thank you-you seriously made my day with your review.

ReaderMarz: I was wondering if anyone would catch the Ami reference. This fic is set early on in Sailor Moon R, so Ami's probably comfortable enough with her senshi powers by then that she would give her mother a bag of nevermelting ice. Yes, I do think up explanations for these sorts of things.


	9. Chapter 8

I wish I owned Sailor Moon...

Sorry about the abrupt ending, guys. I was forced to cut it a little short for time reasons. But the beginning of Chapter 9 tomorrow will be what was supposed to be the ending of this chapter. And that sentence made no sense.

* * *

><p>Whistling to herself, Elsa Grey slams her locker shut and hoists her bag over her shoulder. She has only one period left before lunch, thankfully; all that's left now is English, and then she can devour the sandwich in her lunchbox. She is ravenous from this morning's run, and as she sits down at her desk, her stomach growls angrily.<p>

"Shut up," she tells it, poking it through her blouse. "Forty more minutes, okay?"

As she sighs, resting her chin on her upturned palm, Kaioh Michiru walks into the room and sits down next to her. "Hello, Elsa-san," the violinist says politely, not looking at her for some reason. "Did you finish the bibliography for the project?"

"Yup. Sure did," Elsa says, pulling her bag onto her lap and digging through it until she finds the paper. "Sorry if it's a bit crinkled. You know how dangerous storing papers in my bag can be." Handing it to her partner, she glances at Michiru's face. And then she glances again and frowns.

Something is different about the violinist. "Um, not to be rude, Michiru-san, but did you get a nose job?" she asks, pointing at her own nose. "It's kind of, um, swollen and a bit crooked-looking."

Michiru turns a bright red—something Elsa has never seen happen before and probably will never see again—and covers her nose. "No," she says hurriedly. "I don't know why you would ask."

Elsa chuckles at the violinist's reaction and says, "Calm down, I was just asking. And hey, at least your nose isn't as bad as this woman I met this weekend. She, um," Elsa pauses to think of a story that doesn't involve giant talking keyboards, as Michiru would likely think her crazy, "got punched in the face a few times. And broke her nose. I had to realign it for her, but boy was it bad-looking before I fixed it." Her laughter trails off as Michiru stares at her. "So... yeah."

The violinist nods somewhat awkwardly; she runs her thumb over the bridge of her nose self-consciously and forces, "So I brought a rough draft of the essay so you can critique it. Here." She grabs a plain green folder from her bag and takes the paper out, sliding it to Elsa's desk. "After all, we are working together."

Elsa looks down at the paper, then at Michiru, who looks unbearably tired and empty and her eyes—her eyes are strangely haunted. An involuntary shudder travels up Elsa's spine as she takes in the violinist's appearance and the woman from Saturday—the warrior—flashes in her mind.

"I..." she begins to say, and Michiru looks up from poring over the bibliography. "Yes?" the violinist says.

"It's nothing." Elsa shakes her head and grabs the draft, staring at it until she feels it should be burning from the intensity of her gaze.

* * *

><p>There is no daimon attack today, and for that Michiru is grateful. There were two daimons on Saturday and three—<em>three<em>—on Sunday, and now she is exhausted beyond all measure. It takes every ounce of her strength just to get through the day, just to keep her eyes open. And it doesn't help that the words from last night's dream—a strangely short dream—bounce around in her head the entire day. _Find your partner, _they say, _find her soon... you can't survive like this..._

Indeed. The more she fights, the more of her humanity slips away. The sands eat away at her from the inside.

She sits down and presses the power button on her computer, waiting for Windows 3.1 to start up. Though what she really wants to do is flop onto her bed and sleep for the rest of her life, she knows she has duties.

Namely, rewriting the essay to meet Elsa's rather high standards.

If this was six months ago, before she became a senshi, Michiru would have easily put more effort into writing the essay. She would have matched Elsa's standards, and her own, and then some just on the first draft. But she is too tired to write well.

The computer dings triumphantly as it finishes starting up, and Michiru quickly finds the file she is looking for. She opens it and begins to type.

"Elsa Grey," she says aloud, rubbing her nose self-consciously. "Does she know?"

Someone knocks on her door, and she jumps.

Placing the keyboard down and grabbing a small knife from the counter just in case it's a daimon, which actually happened to her once, she walks to the door and says, "Who is it?"

"It's me, Elsa. You left your wallet in English."

Surprised, she opens the door to Elsa, who stands in front of her in a loose jacket and short shorts. "Here," the runner says, digging through her pockets and grabbing Michiru's wallet. "You left this on your desk. You should really be more careful about where you leave your stuff." Chuckling, she hands Michiru the wallet.

It is a few moments before the violinist regains her composure. "Would you like to come in?" she says. "I'm revising the essay right now, actually. I'll make you some tea."

"Sure," Elsa says, stepping into the apartment. She reaches down and takes her shoes off, placing them next to the door. "Thank you."

"Oh, don't worry. It's no problem." Michiru gestures to the living room. "I'll go make us some tea."

Elsa looks around quickly and whistles. "You live here alone," she says, more of a statement than a question.

Michiru stops halfway to the kitchen. "Yes," she says. "I moved out when I was sixteen. Young, I know."

Elsa stares at her, but Michiru has already turned her back and hurried into the kitchen. "Sixteen?" Elsa repeats, astounded. She looks back at the spartan living room, which has two couches and a small table, and says again, "Sixteen..."

She sits down, and in perhaps ten minutes Michiru walks out of the kitchen with two steaming hot tea cups. She places one in front of the runner and sits down across from Elsa. The runner lifts it carefully and gently blows on it.

"Thank you," she says. "So how have you been, Michiru-san?"

The violinist opens her mouth as if to say something, but closes it as she reconsiders. She thinks for a moment more and finally says, "Fine, thank you. Tired. I haven't been sleeping very well lately."

Elsa smiles. "You could always try running with me at five in the morning," she jokes, but her smile fades as Michiru says nothing. "Hey, what's wrong?" she says quietly.

"Huh?" Michiru blinks and looks up at her. "I... I guess I zoned out for a second. I was just thinking about the project," she says, but Elsa sees right through the lie.

"You can tell me," the runner says. "You don't have to, but if it makes you feel better then you can tell me. I won't tell anyone else."

Michiru shakes her head. "No. I can't tell you," she says, gripping her cup of tea so tightly that Elsa is surprised it hasn't shattered. "I'm sorry, Elsa-san. I've just had a lot going on in my life lately."

And it all becomes clear.

The struggling neurons in Elsa's brain finally make the connection. She chokes on her tea as her eyes go wide, and she shakily places the cup down on the table, coughing. "The woman on Saturday," she says.

Michiru's face drains of its color.

"You're the woman from Saturday." Elsa pauses, clears her throat, and continues. "Sailor Neptune."

Today is full of firsts; today is the first (and perhaps only) time she has ever seen Michiru turn bright red. And it is also the first (and probably only) time she sees the violinist at a loss for words.

"How do you know that?" Michiru whispers after several long moments.

Elsa is surprised; she was not expecting that to be the first thing from Michiru's mouth. She shrugs. "I just knew, I guess. It all became clear after you said you had a lot going on. Michiru-san, I—"

Michiru interrupts her. Another first.

"Call me Michiru," she says, "Elsa."

* * *

><p>imjce: The Setsuna kiss was really just to freak Michiru out, I admit. But she probably didn't even notice with the whole choking on dust thing-the original title of this story was actually "A Mouthful of Sand," speaking of which. (I didn't like it though.) In regards to the whole "playing violin all night long" thing, Michiru's neighbors are all conveniently deep sleepers andor having loud sex at four in the morning.

And who said this story was just Michiru's backstory...?

ReaderMarz: I'm working on it.

Swinging Cloud: I love Animorphs to little tiny bits. Ax is so goddamn adorable. Also, Chapter 6 actually clocks in as the longest chapter so far, with 2174 words. Coming in second is Chapter 1, with 2017 words, and last is Chapter 4, with 1322 words. But then again, I do pad my chapters out with all of the responding to reviews I do, so maybe they are getting shorter. I don't know.

James Birdsong: Thank you!


	10. Chapter 9

Still don't own it, guys.

This super-short (relatively speaking) chapter is dedicated to Swinging Cloud, who pointed out in his/her last review that maybe my chapters are getting shorter. I don't know, Microsoft Word put this one at about 1200 words. It'll be way more after I type out all of the review responses.

* * *

><p>True to her word, Elsa says nothing about Michiru's identity as Sailor Neptune. As Michiru walks into school the next day, she half-expects the paparazzi to show up and ask her how and when she became a magical girl, but thankfully the only other people in the hallway are students. She places her bag in her locker, taking only the Chemistry textbook she needs for first period. She walks to her classroom silently, and as she enters she hears someone say, "...racing against Tenoh Haruka, did you hear?"<p>

Michiru's ears involuntarily perk up, though she knows she has no time for gossip or schoolgirl crushes. She sits down at her desk, listening to the other girl say, "Grey-san? Wow, do you think she can beat Haruka? Haruka is one of the best, after all."

The first girl laughs. "I think Grey-san has a chance. You know how hard she trains. And Haruka's just a walking hive of drama—remember when she revealed she's female? You know how drama queens are—they're only dramatic because they're bitter that they can't be the best."

"Oh my God, I totally remember that. There was such a media blitz. No one could believe it." A pause. "I wish she was male though—she was damn hot when I thought she was a guy. I would so hit..."

Michiru stops listening, disgusted with their interpretation of Haruka, but takes away an interesting piece of information—Elsa Grey is going to race against Tenoh Haruka.

"Elsa," she says to her friend as she sits down in English, "when is your next track meet? I heard you're racing against Tenoh Haruka..."

The pink-haired girl looks over at her and chuckles. "I'm not surprised you heard that—the whole school is gossiping about it. It's this Saturday. Want to come?"

"I... yes." Michiru nods. "And—Elsa—I know I've asked a lot of you this week, but could you please introduce us?"

"Sure." The runner picks up her pencil, twirling it about her fingers. "Just tell me one thing in return."

"What is it?" The violinist's eyes involuntarily narrow, wondering what the incoming question could be. She hopes that it doesn't have to do with senshi business, but she sags in relief as Elsa quietly says, "How do you write a lowercase Q in English again?"

* * *

><p>The rest of the week passes excruciatingly slowly. There is a daimon on Wednesday, along with two on Friday, but they are nothing she can't handle. She dispatches them quickly and swiftly, almost too easily, but a nagging feeling in the back of her mind quietly whispers that these daimons are merely cannon fodder. Something else is coming.<p>

She awakens on Saturday with the buzz of her alarm, and it is only after she automatically dresses in her school uniform that she remembers it is the weekend. She doesn't bother to change out of it, though; it would only take too much time.

At 7:30 a.m., she grabs her sketchbook and takes the subway to Nishimachi, the school where the track meet is being held. As she arrives, she spots Elsa standing by the entrance to the track, obviously waiting for her. As Elsa sights her, the runner's face brightens and she waves. "I'm glad you could make it," she says with a grin. "Ready to watch me destroy Haruka-san? This is why I've been training so much lately."

She leads Michiru to the bleachers, chattering all the while. Michiru listens politely until, from the corner of her eye, she catches sight of a blonde-something.

Her blue eyes widen as she sees Haruka, the fangirl crush from months prior resurfacing suddenly. The racer is wearing naught but a loose shirt, short shorts, and a number pinned to her front.

And Michiru is mesmerized.

She stares for several seconds before Elsa waves her hand in front of the violinist. "Earth to Michiru," she says. "Earth to..."

Michiru snaps out of it and stares half-jokingly at the runner. "All right, all right, whatever," she says, lips curling into an amused smile. "Go get prepared to run. Drink some water, or whatever it is you guys do."

"I think you just want me out of the way so you can stare some more. Am I right?"

Her cheeks tinged a faint pink, the violinist scowls at Elsa. "No," she snaps. "You need to get prepared. I'm just concerned for your well-being, that's all."

"_Sure,_" Elsa says, glancing significantly at the racer. "You have fun, now."

With that, she descends to the track, taking her place at the starting line and stretching carefully. Michiru quietly observes as she tries to strike up a conversation with Haruka, who obviously doesn't want to speak.

Soon enough, the runners are all gathered at the start line. Michiru watches as Haruka's eyes go wide just before they are to start, and the racer kneads the bridge of her nose for a second.

"Get ready!" the referee shouts. "Set!"

The runners all crouch, and Elsa makes a quiet comment to Haruka that the violinist is unable to hear.

"Go!"

It is not two seconds in that Michiru realizes that Elsa has no chance of beating the racer.

Haruka moves quickly, with a strange, gliding grace that Michiru has never seen before. She cuts through the air as easily as a knife through butter, and it is only ten seconds later when she crosses the finish line.

After the meet, when Haruka is putting her jacket on, Elsa walks up to the runner. "I've heard of your reputation. You're really great; I haven't had a challenge like that in a long time," she says, smiling sincerely. Haruka looks at her quietly and finally says, "Thank you."

"Oh, and speaking of which, I have a friend I want to introduce you to." Elsa looks over her shoulders and calls, "Over here, Michiru."

Holding her sketchbook tightly, the violinist follows her friend's voice, quickly finding her in the throng of people. As she steps forward to greet Haruka, she locks eyes with the racer and finds herself at a loss for words; she doesn't even hear what Elsa is saying, she is so lost in Haruka's eyes. And it is then that she realizes—

Haruka is Sailor Uranus.

They stare at each other for several moments until Michiru smiles and says quietly, "You didn't break a sweat. Were you holding back?"

Haruka blinks and smirks indifferently, saying, "Whatever do you mean?"

The violinist's gaze softens as she searches for the right words. "You can hear the wind rustling, can't you?" she says before she wonders if the sentence even makes sense.

But Haruka's eyes widen, her eyes becoming cold as she puts up her apathetic front. "You're weird," she comments, turning to pick up her bag, and the words pierce Michiru's heart. "What do you want from me, anyway?"

Stunned at the rejection, Michiru blurts out the first thing that comes to her mind. "I want to paint you," she says. Haruka looks back at her with a strange expression before she looks away and says quietly, "I'll pass. I don't like that sort of thing."

And she leaves without another word.

Michiru stands there and stares silently at the spot Haruka had just stood on. "Hey, Michiru, she was a jerk anyway," Elsa says, trying to console her.

Michiru does not say anything. She stands and stares.

Eventually, Elsa realizes that it is probably best to leave the violinist alone, and so she leaves too to gather the rest of her belongings.

A few minutes later, Michiru shakes her head and sighs in disappointment. She spins on her heel and hurries off without even saying goodbye to Elsa.

That night, she dreams.

* * *

><p>KinoAG: Thank you for the criticism. The earlier chapters, thanks to my inexperience with writing dramatic heavy fiction, are prone to sometimes following the Rule of Funny-if it's funny, include it. (I wrote a lot of humorous stories before this one, most of which are not on , so don't look for them :D) I apologize if this broke the atmosphere for you-Chapter Ten will be suitably drama-heavy, I promise.<p>

James Birdsong: I completely forgot that English class in Japan is probably not anything like English class in the United States-mainly because English is usually not their first language in the Land of the Rising Sun. Whoops.

ReaderMarz: Are you implying something about the quality of my writing? *mock glare*

FaintFiction: I'm too young to remember Windows 3.1; I actually had to do a bit of research on it for the last chapter because I didn't have any personal experience with it. And thank you!

imjce: I should write a story about Mechanic Gendo... and if you really want a cameo that badly, what do you want your character name to be?


	11. Chapter 10

I'm borrowing Sailor Moon for my own devious purposes. But it doesn't belong to me, and I didn't get the owner's permission. So is that stealing?

* * *

><p>The harsh winds kick up sand, blowing it forcefully at her. So strong is the force of the winds that each grain of sand cuts through her skin and into her muscles, which scream in agony. Face contorting in pain, she moves a hand to shield her eyes from the sand, but she is too late; the sands reach her eyes and bite into her corneas, embedding themselves deep within her eyes. Her vision flickers, darkness eating at its corners, and her mind screeches in pain.<p>

"No," she despairs, taking care not to move her lips much for fear of the sands, "no... this isn't supposed to be this way."

The sands eat away at her flesh, which is riddled with millions of punctures. Biting back a scream, she yells, "_Monster! Show yourself!_"

She thrusts her bleeding hand out in front of her, and the winds cease.

All falls silent.

The dead sky burns a bright red, its expanse split in two by a hole that seems to be made of darkness itself. In the distance, something red descends from the maw of the darkness, and as she stares, fear pierces her heart.

It is then that she notices her surroundings. She is standing in the ruins of Tokyo, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of statues that all look like people. She glances at one to her left and does a double-take.

_They are not statues_, she realizes as she stares at its twitching brown eyes. _They are people._

And the monster touches the world.

A tsunami roars, interrupting the numerous questions she had about the statues. She turns her head sharply to look at the water, which is so loud that she cannot hear anything else, save for the beating of her own heart.

The tsunami dwarfs even the skyscrapers of Tokyo, almost eating at the sky. Compared to it, she is naught but a speck of dust. Yet her own heart beats strongly in her ears.

She screams finally, and the water rushes toward her. It engulfs her. She drowns.

And she wakes up, covered in sweat.

Haruka looks at the clock and shakes her head, trying to shake the image of the statue's twitching eyes from it.

She lays back down, but does not fall back asleep the rest of the night.

* * *

><p>Pain lances through Michiru's hands—both of them—and she knows there will be a daimon today.<p>

Wary, she goes through school as normal, waiting for the inevitable attack. And it does come eventually, in seventh period.

It is the usual sort of thing; someone touched an infested object and it came to life and attacked them. Slipping into a bathroom, Michiru transforms into Neptune.

And that is when she realizes, thanks to her heightened senshi senses, that the daimon attack is not here.

It is at Nishimachi.

She rushes from the bathroom, throwing the door open so forcefully that it slams against the wall, and into an adjacent classroom. The students watch in shock as she jumps on a table and into a window, shattering the glass into millions of pieces. There are many embedded in her body, but she doesn't care; all that matters now is getting to Nishimachi in time.

"I won't let you die," she growls through her teeth as she leaps over cars and past staring pedestrians. She runs, runs faster than she ever thought possible. The seconds tick away. Her eyes narrow in determination.

She arrives five minutes later and finally allows herself to stop in order to pinpoint the daimon's location. But she soon finds that it is unnecessary; a large beaker with legs marked _Sulfuric acid _bursts from the building. Inside of it is, presumably, the acid, along with a bright shining something. The Pure Heart.

"DEEP..." Michiru says, aiming for where the daimon will be in a few seconds, "...SUBMERGE!"

The ball of energy bursts from her hands, hitting the daimon square in what she presumes to be its chest. Its legs give out from under it and it tumbles to the ground, nearly spilling its contents. But it jumps back up quickly, soon spotting her. "VASO!" it yells, before it adds, "MAKE SURE YOU WEAR AN APRON WHEN HANDLING DANGEROUS CHEMICALS!"

Acid shoots from its face at her, hitting her left hand. Immediately it begins to eat away at her glove, quickly burning a hole in it—and some of her skin, as well, as sharp pain shoots through it. The scars burn unbearably as she jerks her hand back.

Leaning back, she roundhouse kicks the daimon's face, causing its glass to crack just enough for the acid to start leaking out. It falls in tiny droplets onto the grass, which withers wherever the acid touches.

The daimon screeches. "DON'T FORGET ABOUT YOUR EYEWEAR!" it yells after it recovers, spitting acid at her eyes. But this attack she manages to dodge and the acid only scrapes her cheek, which begins to burn not long after. She ignores this and instead focuses on attacking it; if she can crack it enough to make the acid drip out of it, she figures, then she can get the Pure Heart. She whirls around and kicks it again, causing it to stagger back and the crack to lengthen.

But the daimon finally sees what she is doing; it glances down at the crack in its glass and back to Michiru.

It turns tail and runs into the street.

The Pure Heart sloshes about in the acid, and as Michiru sprints after the daimon she silently hopes that it will somehow fall out of the beaker. Something does fall out of the beaker, but it is not what she wants; instead of a Pure Heart, acid spills on her heels, beginning to eat away at her feet. She stumbles, and trips, but quickly gets up and begins to run again. Her heels fall off—the acid had eaten through their straps—and she leaps from them, her feet screaming in agony.

"I won't let you die," she growls again, pumping her legs faster. But more acid sloshes from the daimon's lid and onto her bare feet, eating away at the muscle there.

She looks down and sees bones—sees bones and her beating blood vessels.

She feels no pain; the acid has eaten her nerves. She doesn't feel anything, actually; where her feet should be, she feels nothing. As if she had only stumps there.

As she pounds her feet against the concrete, slowly catching up to the daimon, something cracks loudly. Her feet suddenly give from under her, and she collapses onto the sidewalk. As she looks back, she sees that her toes—or rather, the bones of her toes—have broken off.

But she claws at the concrete with her hands and pushes herself up. The acid in the beaker-daimon is almost gone—she can see it—and perhaps if she catches up with it now she can retrieve the Pure Heart.

Her bones scrape against the sidewalk as she forces herself onto her feet for one last try. Steeling herself, she sucks in a deep breath, her bones dripping blood all over the pavement, and she begins to run.

She runs harder than she has ever run before, and with the loss of blood and muscle, it is extraordinarily difficult. Lightheadedness comes quickly, along with the telltale sound of bones shattering, but she catches up to the daimon.

She grabs hold of the beaker's lip, and the daimon turns, shocked. "YOU NEED TO WEAR CLOSED-TOED SH—" the daimon begins.

Michiru cuts it off. She grabs its glass face and rips it from the body. Reaching into its corpse, she grabs hold of the daimon egg with her gloved hand and shatters it, making sure she has no shards embedded in her hands, and finally grabs the Pure Heart.

And she runs as well as she can back to Nishimachi.

She is greeted with an ambulance when she arrives. A crowd is gathered around it, all chattering excitedly. But they all fall silent as she steps toward the ambulance and stare at what used to be her feet in horror.

Stumbling toward where the daimon's victim is strapped to a gurney, she takes a look at him. He is a young boy—perhaps fifteen or so—with thick brown hair and strong features. His face is ashen grey.

She wonders if it is too late, but she holds out the Pure Heart. It drifts toward the boy before disappearing into his chest.

And nothing happens.

The crowd watches in silence as her eyes widen. "No," she says, grabbing his shoulders. "No. No, you can't die on me. Don't you die on me." She shakes him forcefully. "Wake up!" she yells, slapping his cheek. "_WAKE UP!_"

She puts her ear to his chest, desperately checking for a heartbeat that is not there. "NO!" she sobs, slamming her fist onto the gurney. Tears trail down her acid-burned cheek. "I-I didn't just save you for you to die!"

His heart remains silent.

* * *

><p>She walks back to her apartment.<p>

When the bones of her feet break apart, she crawls.

She refuses to walk inside the apartment lobby as it is, so she scales the building using just her hands. Her legs dangle precariously in the strong wind of the evening, but finally she makes it to her window. She reaches in with her free arm and unfastens the latch, opening it and tumbling inside.

Finally, she detransforms.

She drags herself to the sofa and sits down. On her coffee table is a large canvas, along with some painting supplies—she had wanted to get her creativity flowing yesterday, but couldn't think of anything.

Now she has the perfect picture.

She stretches her arm out and grabs her paintbrush and palette, dipping into her blue paint first. She traces a single stroke over the beautiful blank canvas, leaving a shining hint of what will be a tsunami.

* * *

><p>ReaderMarz: Sorry about the lack of girl-with-girl interaction here-that's coming up, though. We're through the least romantic chapter in the entire story (so far), and Haruka and Michiru are going to interact more starting with the next chapter (once Michiru recovers, of course), so you'll get your girl-with-girl eventually.<p>

imjce: Pluto really is shaping up to be kind of creepy, isn't she? First she kisses Michiru, then she appears on her balcony and watches her sleep before giving her a magic stick, then she appears as Michiru's nurse and tells her to cut open her own hands, and I was actually planning to have her materialize in the middle of Michiru's apartment in the last chapter. (That got cut, though.) And I'm pretty sure Serenity provides same-sex benefits, considering that all of the most popular couples are lesbian couples.

FaintFiction: Thank you!


	12. Chapter 11

Can you say, hello badly-inserted scenes from the anime?

* * *

><p>She shuts herself in her apartment and does not leave for the next week. The only human contact she has over the week is on Tuesday, when her agent calls her to schedule a show. The phone rings as she finishes painting a crumbled building; gently placing the paintbrush down, she reaches over to the small table and picks up the phone. "Hello," she says. "Kaioh Michiru speaking."<p>

"Michiru-san, it's me, Ayanami. How have you been?"

Michiru glances down at her destroyed feet. "Fine," she answers quietly. "I suppose you've gotten an invitation for me to play, or something like that?"

Through the phone, she imagines she can hear Ayanami nodding. "Yes," her agent says eagerly. "A friend of mine named Yui has invited you to play on her cruise ship before it goes to sea. It's this Sunday and she's offering one hundred million yen. What do you think?"

"Well," Michiru's lips twist into an unsure grimace, "I'm sick, Ayanami-san. If I recover by then, I'll definitely play. Don't worry," she says, hearing her agent quietly gasp, "it's nothing bad. I'll call you back on Saturday."

"Michiru-san—sick? My God, it's the end of the world. You never get sick, Michiru-san. What happened?"

"I... I guess I caught a bug that's floating around. Or something." She pauses and looks back at her painting. "Oh, and Ayanami-san?"

"Yes?"

"Could you let Yui-san know that I'll do it if she'll allow me to exhibit a painting onboard?"

Her agent answers in the affirmative, and Michiru hangs up quickly afterward. Sighing, she resumes painting, but stops a few minutes later and looks down at her legs, hoping that they'll heal in time for the show, for something inside of her tells her that Haruka will be there.

She falls asleep on the couch two hours later, at four in the afternoon, in the middle of painting the red sky. She dreams of the dead boy.

At two in the morning, something in her legs begins to burn. The pain is small at first—easily ignorable—but eventually becomes white-hot. She wakes up with a jolt, face scrunched up from the pain, and pulls her leg up to look at it. The bones of her feet have grown back, save for her toes, and obviously her nerves are growing back now. They burn with a memory of the acid.

Shocked at how quickly her feet are healing, Michiru brings a hand to her face and touches her cheek. Her skin is whole—unmarred, as though the acid had never touched her skin.

She leans over to the canvas and dips her brush into red paint to finish the sky while she is still awake.

* * *

><p>By the end of the week, there are barely any indications that her feet were ever destroyed.<p>

It is the senshi healing powers, she supposes as she looks down at her feet on Saturday afternoon. They have grown back almost completely—her toes still have no skin, though, so it hurts just moving her feet. Standing up and wincing a little, she walks to the kitchen to get a drink of water. She grabs a glass from the cupboard and fills it with tap water, leaning against the counter as she thirstily gulps it down. Wiping her mouth as she finishes, she turns to wash the glass when she catches sight of the phone.

She places the cup down and walks over to it. Picking the receiver up, she first dials her agent's number. Ayanami answers after the second ring.

"Ayanami speaking," the agent says in a neutral tone.

"Ayanami-san, it's Michiru," she says quietly. "My sickness went away, so I'm all better. Has Yui-san said anything?"

"Oh, Michiru-san!" The agent's voice lightens considerably. "I'm so glad you're better. Yui called me on Wednesday, and I told her your conditions, and she said she would agree. She said that she's a fan of your paintings, actually, and that it would be an honor to have one aboard the ship."

Michiru nods, though she knows the agent is unable to see it. "Tell her I'll play, then. What time is the show scheduled, again?"

"Eight-thirty. She's going to be so excited!" Ayanami giggles, and something buzzes over the line. "Oh, I have another call. Sorry. I'll talk to you later, Michiru-san, okay? See you!" The phone clicks as her agent hangs up, and the dial tone begins to hum through the speaker.

Michiru almost places the phone down, but hesitates before she does. She thinks for a minute and quickly dials Elsa Grey's number before she can reconsider. After the third ring, the runner picks up.

"Hello?" Elsa says into the phone. "This is Elsa Grey."

"Elsa, it's me," Michiru says. Before she can say anything else, the runner cuts her off with a, "_Michiru_? Where have you been? I've been worried sick about you! I haven't seen you since you burst through the window of my History class on Monday. What happened?"

Michiru looks down and grabs the phone's cord, twisting it about her index finger as she speaks. "I got hurt, Elsa."

"...Bad?"

Deciding it is best to go right out and say it, she admits quietly, "My feet were destroyed."

Elsa does not say anything for the next few minutes, though Michiru can hear a sharp intake of breath as she digests the information. "Oh god," she says finally. "You... you have no feet?"

"It's why I couldn't come to school. But they've actually grown back thanks to my senshi healing powers, I guess. So I have feet now, even if they aren't fully healed." She does not tell Elsa what happened with the boy afterward.

"So I don't need to call an ambulance?" Elsa forces herself to laugh. "You shouldn't have been able to survive that... and you _are _alive and well days after your feet... so I guess I don't need to call one..."

Michiru tries to laugh as well, but the context of the situation weighs heavily on her. The line falls silent.

"Michiru?" Elsa says after several minutes.

"Yes?"

"You know I'm always there for you, right?"

The violinist smiles for the first time in several days.

"Of course," she says. "Thank you, Elsa."

"I'm your friend—it's what friends are for, right?"

"Yes." She nods. "I need to go finish a painting. Thank you, Elsa."

"Any time."

Michiru is the one who hangs up. Walking back to the living room, she sits down and grabs her brush. She works for the next three hours until it is finished.

* * *

><p>Sitting back, she looks at the painting. It depicts a gigantic tsunami rearing up, ready to engulf a destroyed Toyko. The sky above it is a deep shade of scarlet, and in the center of the sky there is a distant red shape. Below, on the city streets, there are people; thousands of people, all too small to be more than just dots.<p>

She decides to title it "The End of the World." She figures it is fitting enough, though it does not match with her dreams.

* * *

><p>Sunday afternoon, four-fifteen; the dress she will wear to the show lays on her bed, but she does not look at it. She had grabbed it almost carelessly from her closet, not bothering to even look at what dress she had chosen. Right now she relaxes in the shower, something she does more and more. But as it is, what Michiru is doing could barely be called relaxing.<p>

She sits on the floor of the tub, letting the warm water slide down her body. She sits with her knees curled into her chest, her arms wrapped around her calves, her head buried into her thighs, and weeps for the first time in several months. Eventually, she stands up. Her eyes are puffy and just a little bit red. Having finished washing her body long ago, she simply turns the shower off. She leans her head against the wall and stares down at her reflection in the faucet. She looks at her eyes—the eyes of a murderer—and turns away.

She steps out of the shower and grabs a towel.

She peers through lidded eyes at the audience, wondering if they could ever imagine that the violinist was a murderer.

Strange—it is the death, and not the loss of her feet, that weighs more heavily on her mind. One would think that, with humanity's tendency to be selfish, that she would regard the potential loss of her own mobility as worse than the death of a stranger. After all, people die every day.

Had it been six months ago, Michiru might have said that the loss of her feet is certainly worse. But the more she fights as a senshi, the more she sees that sometimes, the few must sometimes make sacrifices for the rest of humanity. Losing one person is better than losing a thousand.

She will die fighting if it means humanity will survive.

Near the end of her concert, Haruka stands up and leaves the room. Her gaze grows ever-more somber as she sees the racer turn her back on her, and she finishes up the song almost too quickly. As the audience claps, she bows with a forced smile and rushes from the stage, knowing exactly where Haruka will be.

Leaving the room hurriedly, she almost runs through a hallway, the sting of the new nerves in her feet being the only deterrent. Finally, she comes to the entrance of the Grand Ballroom, where "The End of the World" is showing. No one but Haruka is inside, she is sure.

She opens the door silently, and sure enough, Haruka is staring at the painting in shock. The racer's mouth is open a little, and her eyes are widened in a way that Michiru finds strangely adorable. She hasn't even noticed Michiru, so busy is she with staring at the painting, so the violinist sits down quietly and says, "Did you find the show to your liking?"

Haruka does not look surprised to hear her; in fact, the racer completely ignores her, staring at the painting as she is. Eyes a bit more sad, Michiru tries, "Thank you for coming here tonight, Tenoh Haruka-san, the famous racer."

Eyes never leaving the painting, Haruka finally says, "You seem to know a lot about me. I... this piece... did you paint it?"

No. Michiru does not want to speak of the end of the world. She does not want to speak of the Silence. Not of the dead b...

She completely ignores the question and says, "You're rather famous." Which is true—the racer's popularity has skyrocketed since her first race. "There are a lot of freakish fans of yours at my school." She tries to smile as she says it, but ends up with a strange, coy smirk instead. "One of them is a girl, even, but she doesn't care that you're one too. She still wants to cruise along the beach in your car."

But Haruka is stubborn, and refuses to let the matter drop. "'The End of the World,'" she says quietly, reading the title. "I'm surprised that such a well-off girl like you who probably can't even kill one bug could paint such a horrible fantasy."

The image of the dead boy flashes across her mind at the words _can't kill one bug_, and she nearly recoils from the pain it brings to her feet's new nerves. Her heart stutters in her chest as she resists the urge to break down sobbing right there. "It's not a fantasy!" she says somehow, her voice surprisingly strong despite her current mental disarray. "I can see _that _clearly." Hands shaking, she hisses, "Just like you can."

Haruka looks away from the painting and turns to her. As she stares at Michiru, the violinist stands up as if to meet the racer's gaze. Michiru stares strongly at Haruka for several seconds before the racer looks away and growls, "This is stupid. I'm Tenoh Haruka, one of the best racers in Japan." The racer's hands curl into fists as she glares at Michiru. "Memories of my previous life or the end of the world have nothing to do with me," she says, voice raising as she goes on. "If someone has to do it, _you _do it. Don't drag me into your damn play-war."

Michiru folds her hands together at her waist to stop herself from grabbing the racer's collar and yelling, "_People are dying_!"

She says nothing.

"And, while we're at it," Haruka adds, "stop stalking me."

With that last sentence, Michiru finally snaps. "Don't say such selfish things," she says quietly, repressing her anger. She looks down at her hands. "I don't want to do it either. Do you think I had a choice? I have a dream too—to become a violinist." The venom finally leaks into her voice as she says sarcastically, "I can't do something stupid like save the world from destruction, now can I?"

She leaves fifteen minutes afterward, knowing Haruka never wants to see her again. The racer had told her in no uncertain words that she was refusing to be Sailor Uranus, to get involved in the play-war, as she called it, or to even consider what Michiru was saying.

* * *

><p>Michiru pushes the thought of Haruka as far from her mind as possible over the next week. She does not speak to Elsa at all, despite knowing that the runner is concerned for her well-being. She does not speak at all, save for when she is asked a question by her teachers.<p>

Not really knowing why, she goes to see Kameda on Friday.

She arrives at the racetrack an hour after school lets out, and sees that a race is about to begin. Pit crews are everywhere, all hovering over shiny cars, and she looks around for a minute before she spots Kameda. She smiles a bit and walks down the stairs to greet him before she realizes that all of the racers are standing next to their crew, save for Haruka.

She stops midway down the stairs and looks back at the grid.

She does not see the racer. She looks around wildly before she finally sees a figure clothed in red stepping into a garage. Haruka.

_There's a daimon, _her instinct tells her. _There's a daimon there. Daimon daimon daimondaimonDAIMON—_

She runs as fast as she can to the garage.

She arrives exactly six seconds after Haruka had gone in. A large red daimon, akin to the first one she had ever seen, rears up on its stem as it lunges toward the racer, rows of teeth outstretched to slice through her firesuit. Thankfully, Haruka blocks it with a crowbar—Michiru doesn't bother to wonder where she had picked that up—but as she lands on the ground, the crowbar flies out of her hands. Green eyes widening, she scrambles toward it, but not quickly enough—the monster lunges at her before she can grab it, and Michiru jumps forward, ready to put herself in harm's way to save her—

Something flashes brightly.

A blue stick topped with a navy orb materializes in front of Haruka.

Michiru's breath catches in her throat as the racer, transfixed, reaches toward it, and finally she yells, "Don't take it!"

The moment is broken; the stick clatters to the floor. Startled, Haruka looks back sharply only to see the violinist.

"Don't take it," Michiru says again. "If you grab it, you will never be the same."

The violinist looks up at the blue sky, avoiding Haruka's stare, but on the last word she turns to look at the monster. Her eyes narrow in determination and she raises her own stick high above her head.

She becomes Neptune.

Haruka stares partly in awe and partly in shock—and Michiru does not like it. She ignores Haruka and rushes at the daimon, punching it right in its face. It flies back into the wall, knocking over a cabinet, and she clenches her fists as she prepares to kill it.

But Haruka rushes in front of it and thrusts her arms to her sides. "You can't!" she says. "That monster was a boy until a few minutes ago!"

The dead boy flashes across Michiru's mind, and she winces internally. But that boy was a victim, she rationalizes, and this is a monster.

"Are you okay with doing this?" Haruka asks. "This is murder!"

She hesitates and finally says, "The Silence is coming."

Haruka's shoulders sag.

"If I don't do this, there will be more death."

Realization dawns in the racer's eyes. "So you don't care how you save the world?" she says.

"Yes. I don't care what means I use."

"But—"

The daimon rears up, knocking the cabinet away, and hisses. Haruka freezes, and it lunges at her.

"NO!"

Michiru rushes at the racer, grabbing her and pulling her out of the way. The daimon's teeth rake her back, leaving several deep scratches near her spine. She lands on top of Haruka and, shaking, looks back at the daimon. "DEEP..." she yells, as the daimon lunges again, "...SUBMERGE!"

A few moments later, the daimon turns back into a boy, and she collapses.

She comes to in Haruka's arms, and despite the flames engulfing her back, it actually feels sort of nice being held. "The daimon," she says quietly. "Did I kill him?"

"He turned back into a boy," Haruka answers. "He's alive."

She turns away from Haruka's gaze and says, "I might have killed him..."

Haruka glances at the boy and frowns.

"I'll probably end up killing again next time..." She looks at Haruka again. "It's not that I'm fine with it," she says quietly, "but I'm a senshi... I chose to do this..."

"Then why did you cover for me? Why didn't you let me die?" Haruka says. "If you hurt your arm, you won't be able to play your violin." And the racer picks up Michiru's arm in her hands, which are surprisingly warm and soft.

"I..." Michiru pauses to think of a lie, but she is not much of a liar by nature—the truth tumbles from her mouth all too easily. "I didn't stalk you because you're Sailor Uranus. It goes back further than when I realized you were a senshi... I was watching your first race from close by. And I wanted to cruise along the beach in your car—just once..." She bites her lip, seeing Haruka's surprised reaction, but continues, "You don't rely on anyone, and you're always true to your feelings. And I wish—I wish I could be like that."

"No. I'm not honest at all," Haruka interrupts her. "I keep running away."

"But don't you see?" Michiru tries to smile again. "You're not running away. You're just being true to yourself. You don't want to do this—don't want the burden it offers you. I don't want to see you walk the same path I have, so you can—you should—deny it."

She pulls Haruka's arms from around her body and stands up on wobbly feet. "I'm sorry..." she says quietly. "I shouldn't have told you this." She manages a half-smile. "Have a good race, all right?"

And with that, she turns to leave.

"Wait."

Visibly surprised, Michiru looks back at the racer.

"This thing will let me save the world, right?" Haruka holds up the stick.

Michiru's mouth falls into an O. She stares for several seconds at the racer before she stammers, "Y-yes, it will."

"All right." Haruka holds up the stick.

A moment later, Sailor Uranus stands before her.

* * *

><p>imjce part one (ch. 6): THERE IT'S URANUS HAPPY?<p>

imjce part two (ch. 5): Nah, I don't think they really need bilingual qualifications. It's only their names that are in Spanish. Hell, my last name is Chinese, but I don't know Mandarin.

Kyzano: Thank you!

ReaderMarz: Oh, yes. I was wincing and cuddling my feet in pain just writing the last chapter.

James Birdsong: Thanks!

Dawnlight-6: I was actually considering prosthetics via a creepy Pluto intervention for a few minutes before I got the email about your review. Sort of creepy, actually.

imjce part three (ch. 4): Pluto is actually doing research at a university about the nature of time. Which basically means, she's goofing around and occasionally giving clues as to what time is really like. The professors are eating it up.


	13. Chapter 12

This chapter is so dialog-centric.

Sorry about not updating for the last few days. I've had a lot of stuff going on in real life. You can sort of tell-this chapter isn't my favorite. (I think that award so far goes to the one where her feet get destroyed. Sorry, imjce!)

* * *

><p>After the race, Michiru walks down to the pit. Kameda is there, fixing up Haruka's car already; as she walks inside the garage, he pulls himself from underneath the car and looks to see who it is. "Michiru-san," he says with a grin as he recognizes her. "Haven't seen you in a while. How have you been doing?"<p>

"Good," she says, and for the first time in several months, it is true—she does feel good, now that Haruka is awoken. She even dares to think that she might be feeling a little cheerful despite everything, and she continues, "What about you?"

"I'm pretty decent," Kameda says, wiping his oily face with a rag. "I've just been busy. My son's opening up an auto shop in Azabu-Juuban, so I've been helping him with that a lot."

Michiru's hands burn slightly as he mentions his son, a strange reminder of duty, and she stuffs them in her lap. Her gaze becomes serious as he finishes speaking, but she continues lightly, "That's very impressive. How old is your son?"

"He just turned twenty this May." Kameda stands up and walks around to the front of the car, fiddling with the suspension. Michiru's eyebrows raise up.

"Twenty, and he's starting his own business?" she says. "Wow."

Before she can say anything else, someone says, "Hey, Kameda-san, are you breaking my car again?"

Haruka stands there with a large trophy, cradling it like it is an infant. She opens her mouth to say something else as she walks in and suddenly pauses when she sees Michiru. Her eyes flick over the violinist's form for a moment and she says, "Are we still up for dinner?"

Kameda looks interestedly between the two. "You two know each other?" he says, blinking. Haruka looks back at him and says, "I could ask you the same thing."

As she watches the racer and mechanic interact, Michiru cuts in. "Yes," she says, and Haruka's head sharply turns toward her as the racer fixes her with a gaze. "Shall we go?"

Haruka nods. "In a few minutes. I need to get out of my firesuit first and change into some normal clothes." As she heads for a door, she adds, "Kameda-san, you might want to check the alternator. It was giving me problems."

"Okay," Kameda says, burying his face in the car again. "I'll do that."

As the door closes behind the racer, Kameda says, "So are you two in a relationship?"

It is the second time Michiru's face has ever turned bright red, and she says quickly, "No, it's not like that. We're just friends. Uh, don't you have an alternator to mess with?"

"Mm-hmm." Kameda pulls the aforementioned part out and inspects it carefully. "Oh yeah, she was right. This is going bad."

"So did it surprise you when Haruka-san revealed that she's a woman?" Michiru asks, looking for a conversation that doesn't involve car parts.

"Guess I should disconnect the negative wire—oh, what's that?" Kameda says, finally looking at Michiru. "Oh. Tenoh-san? Nah, she didn't surprise me. I could kind of tell." He turns back to the car and continues muttering to himself. "Maybe I should try and turn the headlights on," he says.

It is then that Haruka walks back into the garage, wearing a simple white shirt over some black pants. Turning to Michiru, she says, "Shall we go?"

* * *

><p>As she gets in the car, a sudden thought strikes her. Closing the door and buckling herself up, she says, "How old are you again?"<p>

"I—uh, seventeen. I got a license overseas." Haruka laughs awkwardly, and Michiru does not find herself inclined to believe it in the slightest. She nods and says, "Right."

They are silent as the car pulls out of the parking lot, and Haruka finally says, "So I have to wear the skirt?"

Michiru does not say anything, but nods.

The racer sighs in disappointment.

"So do you want to eat out?" Haruka says. "I'm not really in the mood for it, and a restaurant is too public, I think. Want to go to my apartment and talk about things there? I can make something."

Michiru looks sidelong at the racer and says, "Sure. That sounds fine. Where do you live?"

"Not too far from the hospital, actually—the Hino Apartments, ever heard of them? They're named after the politician."

"What floor?"

"The forty-ninth. I have a penthouse suite."

Michiru's mouth curves up and into a small smile. "Interesting. I live on the twenty-seventh."

Haruka's eyebrows shoot up and she looks back at the road intently, seemingly focusing on driving again. "Stalking me, huh..." she mutters.

* * *

><p>Haruka's apartment is much bigger than hers. At the racer's insistence, she wanders around it for a bit while Haruka cooks dinner. "Two bedrooms?" she says loud enough for Haruka to hear. "Do you really need two bedrooms? You're living here alone."<p>

"It's for guests," Haruka yells back. "Not like anyone ever stays over, though."

Michiru shakes her head and continues walking along the hallway, eventually coming to another door. She opens it and looks inside, then closes it and says loudly, "You have a room dedicated to your trophies?"

"It was another bedroom originally, but I didn't need a third one," Haruka says. "The pizza's ready, by the way."

"Is it Italian or American?" Michiru asks as she walks back into the kitchen.

"Does it really matter? It was a frozen American one, anyway. Hope you like pepperoni." Haruka grabs a slice and walks into the living room, sitting down on a couch. Michiru does much the same, but sits down across from the racer. She tears into the slice ravenously. "Guess you do," Haruka says quietly. She watches Michiru devour the slice for a minute and comments, "And I thought you were graceful in everything you do."

Michiru glances at her and swallows the crust. "I haven't eaten in a few days," she admits quietly. "Not since Tuesday, I believe." She stands up and goes to the kitchen, leaving the racer stunned.

"Tuesday?" Haruka says in disbelief. "How—why wouldn't you eat for four days?"

Michiru reenters the room carrying the entire pizza box, sitting back down and placing it on her lap. "Daimons have attacked every day since Tuesday," she says. "When you fight monsters every evening after school, wouldn't you sort of forget to eat in all of the confusion?"

Something in Haruka's eyes flickers as the violinist says the word daimon. Grabbing a slice from Michiru, she places it on her plate. "What are the daimons, exactly?" she says as she waits for the pizza to cool down.

Michiru pauses, a slice halfway to her mouth, and places the pizza back into the box. "Monsters," she says, eyes hardening. "They usually take the form of goofy-looking females, often themed after a particular object. Their purpose is to capture the Talismans, three mystical objects which are hidden inside of pure hearts, and through them, make the Holy Grail. They want the Grail so they can destroy the world."

"So we have to find them first, then."

The violinist nods. "But when we find the Talismans, their owners—those who had them inside of their pure hearts—will die."

Haruka's eyes widen. "We have to kill three people," she realizes, and at her words, the violinist nods again.

"Yes..." Michiru says. "Yes. Three people are going to die to save the world."

* * *

><p>Despite the fact that they live in the same building, Haruka insists that Michiru stay for the night, as it is two in the morning once they are done speaking.<p>

"I'm pretty sure you already know where it is," she says as she leads the violinist to the guest room, "but the bathroom is across the hallway, first door to your left. Here's your room." She opens the door for Michiru, and nods to the door next to the guest room. "My room is right next to this one, so give me a holler if you need anything. Otherwise, good night."

"Thank you," Michiru says gratefully. "Have a good night." She nods politely to the racer and closes her door before she flops into bed, sighing.

She dreams.

* * *

><p>imjce: I am saving that exclamation for later use. Oh, and she didn't just lose her toes. She lost almost all of her feet. As in, practically stumps with some bone shards hanging around. But don't worry, by the time you get here, she'll already have grown them back. Senshi powers and stuff. Next, I'm going to cut off her head. (Not really. The whole broken-feet-part was just to prevent her from getting to the pure heart in time, actually. Oh, the things I do for plot.) Also, remember; Michiru is just now getting back into fangirling about Haruka, so don't expect her to be at the stalking stage just yet. And the whole not-having-insurance-thing is actually quite a good explanation for why Michiru let Elsa fix her nose. And this review is getting to be really long, but I'm way too exhausted from everything to split it into parts like I did last time. Yes, I did infect her hands, much to Haruka's later chagrin, but it was to make her realize how war really is. Emotionally scarring and stuff.<p>

marine cathedral: Reviews like yours always make me smile. I really do try to write this beautifully, in a sense, though this chapter isn't the best example of that. Too much dialog isn't good for the flowy purple prose.

Galaxia's Star Seed: Hablo espanol un pequito, pero se (with the accent mark over the e) unos sustantivos. Uso los sustantivos se (w/ accent mark) imaginar los daimons. And that was incredibly hard to write.

James Birdsong: Thank you!

ReaderMarz: Well, the tone of this did shift noticeably once Haruka became a senshi, going from somber to I-don't-know-what-sort-of-tone-I'm-going-for, but I'm really super exhausted as well. Haruka makes everything just a tad more lighthearted, though.


	14. Chapter 12: Deleted Scene

Here, this is for not publishing an update in a while. Stupidity and sexual content warning. (Just implications, mind you.)

Michiru is a crazy stalker.

* * *

><p>THE MONSTER OF THE SANDS<p>

CHAPTER TWELVE

DELETED SCENE

* * *

><p>Taking care not to make any noise, Michiru quietly peeks into the racer's room. It is clean and orderly, strangely enough, considering the racer's personality, with a neatly made bed. The only thing indicating that someone lives in here at all is a small book sitting on top of a pillow.<p>

Glancing toward the kitchen, Michiru finally decides that it is safe enough to take a look around. She enters the room as silently as possible, which is simple thanks to the very soft carpet, and walks up to the bed. Taking care to memorize how the book sits on the pillow, she picks it up and takes a look at it.

It is an American book, she guesses, as it is in English. "_Chicken Soup for the Soul,_" she reads aloud, raising an eyebrow, and she places it back down in the exact same position it was in before.

Next, she looks at Haruka's nightstand. It is bare, with just a lamp and an alarm clock on it. There are no pictures—and as she thinks that, she realizes that there are no pictures in the entire room. In fact, the only pictures she's seen as she's looked around the house are the ones in the trophy room, of the racer receiving—what else?—trophies.

She would almost feel bad about this if her inner fangirl wasn't squealing excitedly, suppressing all guilt she might have otherwise. She opens the nightstand's drawer, revealing a small necklace with a cross on it and a pair of pink fuzzy handcuffs.

Michiru closes the drawer quickly, eyes wide. She laughs weakly, shocked, but reminds herself that _Haruka is human too, _and that _she has needs like the rest of us_.

To get her mind away from the handcuffs, she walks over to the closet. There are several expensive suits hanging in there, along with various articles of casualwear and pairs of shoes. And boy, does Haruka have shoes—she has everything from loafers to stilettos. Several pairs of stilettos, actually, and the most worn of those is a bright red pair.

"A shoe fetish?" Michiru mumbles, surprised. "Or just—"

She bends down to examine the shoes, but accidentally catches her own on a snag in the carpet. She falls forward and into the closet, barely managing to catch herself before she thumps onto the floor, and finds herself face-to-face with a ball gag.

She turns bright red for the third time in her life and scrambles away from it and out of the closet, setting all of the knocked pairs of shoes upright as she stands up.

She decides to go use the bathroom instead of staying in here.

* * *

><p>She does so, only to discover that the racer is out of toilet paper.<p>

Sighing in irritation and a bit of embarrassment, she opens the cabinet under the sink and reaches in, feeling around with her hand in hopes of finding another roll. Instead she comes across something else.

She pulls out a goddamn riding crop.

Her mouth falls open in horror and she puts it back as fast as she can. Careful of what she grabs this time, she feels around again, only to discover another thing that feels nothing like toilet paper. Knowing that she will regret this, she wraps her hand around it and pulls out a very large—

She leaves the bathroom as fast as she can, convincing herself that she doesn't need toilet paper. Panties still around her ankles, as she doesn't want to touch them with her germy hands, she rushes to the kitchen and pours the entire bottle of soap over her hands. Haruka stares at her as she washes them for fifteen minutes.


	15. Chapter 13

Hi! Class is long and boring and takes up so much time, you know?

I probably won't be able to publish updates as much as I have in the past. Be warned.

* * *

><p>The wind almost knocks Michiru off of her feet as Haruka transforms.<p>

The racer is still uncomfortable with the power her senshi form offers; Michiru can tell. Despite the fact that she had always felt connected to the sky, Haruka is nearly terrified by how much power Uranus gives her over the wind. She is unused to this sort of control—the winds run wild under her shaking hand, because in a sense, she _is _the wind. Her senshi form, Sailor Uranus, is the avatar of the sky.

Not a very impressive avatar, but an avatar nevertheless.

Haruka's eyes are wide and frightened as she shakes her head, trying to make herself believe that this is real. She stares at nothing in particular. Her feet, so carefully perched on the tree branch, are shaking so much that Michiru would not be surprised if she fell out.

The violinist understands why; this is the first daimon that Haruka has ever fought as Uranus. The monster in question runs rampant through the park, chasing after a terrified black-haired man wearing an ugly green jacket, and though the daimon is rather silly-looking, Michiru supposes that Haruka might find it intimidating.

"BANCO!" it shouts at the top of its non-existent lungs, its purple legs propelling its bench-shaped torso forward.

Before Haruka can react, Michiru leaps from the tree and tackles the bench, which collapses in the grass.

"Mi—Neptune! Wait!" the racer shouts, jumping from the tree as well. But instead of Michiru's graceful jump and landing, Haruka finds herself with a mouthful of grass and, presumably, some bugs. At her name, the violinist stops and stares, giving the daimon the perfect opportunity.

"DON'T LITTER OR ELSE SMOKY WILL GET YOU!" it shouts, its hands turning into broken beer bottles. Michiru quickly looks back at the daimon and jumps away from it before it swings the broken bottles at her, narrowly preventing her stomach from being cut open. She ducks down as the daimon swings at her head and kicks the daimon's feet, making it fall again.

"What are you doing?" Michiru asks, holding her hands high above her head. "Fight! DEEP..."

A blue glow materializes in the violinist's hands, and she looks at it, focusing on diverting her energy to it. And in slow-motion, Haruka sees the daimon stand up, and as Michiru is distracted, stab the broken bottle at the violinist's chest, and—

"WORLD SHAKING!"

And a golden ball of energy smashes into the daimon before it strikes.

The daimon is knocked clean across the park, and, blind with anger, Haruka sprints after it. She leaps on its weakened form and punches it in the face. In a flash of light, the daimon disappears.

Only a small, cracked egg is left, and Haruka crushes it in her fist.

Michiru stands there, too stunned to move, with a glowing blue ball in her hands.

* * *

><p>The ride back to their apartment complex is nearly silent. Haruka pulls into the lot and parks quietly, and before she gets out, she turns to Michiru and says, "Tea?"<p>

The violinist nods.

The ride up to Haruka's apartment is not so quiet, as it is so high up that the racer apparently knows all of the elevator music tracks. She hums along as Michiru stands against a wall, staring at her strangely, and the awkward ride is not over soon enough.

* * *

><p>The violinist sits down on the couch, and so does Haruka after filling the kettle with water. They both stare at the table for a few minutes before Michiru says, "Thank you."<p>

Haruka's eyebrows raise in surprise. "You're welcome," she says, taken off-guard by Michiru's words. Before she can say anything else, Michiru adds, "Did you crush the egg with your hands?"

The racer nods.

"Let me see them. You might have gotten a shard or two embedded in your skin, and because of their nature, they'll make you very sick." Michiru's own hand reaches out and grabs Haruka's, and Haruka briefly sees a dark purple scar on her palm before it is covered by the racer's own hand.

"It happened to you," Haruka says, not even bothering to phrase it in the form of a question.

"Yes," Michiru confirms, and says nothing else. She examines Haruka's hand with a careful eye, but all the racer can think about is how surprisingly soft the violinist's hands are, considering the fact that she fights monsters daily. "Other one," she says, letting Haruka's right hand go.

Obediently, the racer extends her left hand, letting Michiru examine that one as well. "Nothing?" she says after a few moments.

"Nothing. You're fine." The violinist lets Haruka's hand go. It drops to the table with a quiet thud.

* * *

><p>They drink their tea in silence.<p>

* * *

><p>Haruka flips on the TV if only to provide some background noise. As she sits back down, Michiru begins hesitantly, "You don't know the gravity of the situation, do you? This last battle only being your first and all."<p>

"Gravity?" Haruka repeats.

"If we fail, everyone will die. The world will end."

Haruka sips at her now-cold green tea. Michiru does not look at her.

"And the monster of the sands will descend upon the earth to blot out life, and the apocalypse will follow..."

The violinist's hands shake as she realizes how truly apocalyptic she sounds, as though she was one of the writers of the Bible, or the Quran, or something more—more—

"Michiru," Haruka says.

She looks up, and Haruka reaches across the table, brushing Michiru's cheek with a thumb.

"You're crying," the racer says.

Michiru smiles. It is not a happy smile. "I seem to be doing that more and more often," she says quietly, and looks away.

"Before you joined me," she starts, "there was a battle. It wasn't against a simple daimon like the one you fought today either—it was a mutated beaker of acid. I chased it all around the city, and with each step it took, acid spilled on my feet. Eventually, my feet were gone. Burnt away."

Afraid of Haruka's reaction, she keeps staring at the kitchen door.

"When at last I retrieved the Pure Heart, I limped my way back to the school the attack had originally been at. I gave the Pure Heart back to its owner. And—and he didn't wake up. He was a young boy, and he didn't wake up. And I let him die. My feet eventually grew back, I guess thanks to my senshi healing powers, but that boy—h—"

Her throat clenches up. "I'm just seventeen, you know," she says, the words coming out in a cacophonous jumble. "And I murdered someone. I killed him, just as surely as I would have killed him by shooting him, and I'm seventeen, and—"

"You didn't kill him."

Haruka's words firmly cut her off.

"The daimon did. You tried your best to save the boy. There wasn't anything more you could have done, Michiru."

Michiru finally notices that Haruka's eyes are sympathetic and sincere. She manages a half-smile, eyes still full of tears.

"You're so idealistic," she says. "I was too."


End file.
